José Aymá Madrid
Madrid
Updated Monday, March 11, 2024-16:50
Taking advantage of the celebration of Mother's Day in the United Kingdom, the Princess of Wales shared a photograph in the company of her children on her social networks this Sunday.
Kate Middleton
had disappeared from the public scene since January, after undergoing abdominal surgery.
The agencies soon took notice and distributed the image through their servers.
Hours later, four of the most important ones,
Getty, France Press, Associated Press and Reuters, decided to eliminate it from their archives
.
Princess Charlotte's missing piece of sleeve and overlapping skirt, the excess blurring of Prince Louis's hand, Middleton's misaligned zipper, certify image manipulation.
Cut and paste, blur mask, crude amateur touch that does not fall into details with an air of certain naivety.
Especially knowing that that photograph is going to go around the world, and will be scrutinized by millions of eyes.
Given the commotion, Kate Middleton herself has released a statement apologizing through her account on the social network
I hope everyone who celebrated it had a happy Mother's Day.'
Like many amateur photographers, I occasionally experiment with editing.'
The increasingly widespread practice of monarchies, political regimes and ideologies of all kinds, of disseminating official photos and videos leads us to
sweet, complacent and biased aversions
to the news.
Using or disabling the meaning of the images at convenience.
Discerning between reality and fiction becomes an exercise of faith on the part of citizens, which at the very least leads to suspicion of covert censorship.
A press photo, intended to inform, cannot be an artistic Photoshop experiment
, spread by an amateur photographer.
It requires a critical and independent explanation of the events that occur in front of the camera.
The press photographer, the journalist, have to be where the news is produced to be the architects of the explanation, dealing with what is real and its veracity.
The absence of press in the princess's posing and dissemination of the manipulated photo casts shadows of doubt.
Selfies look great in the family album, where indulgent images and tricks always have their reprieve.