[helloworld11]

Sorry but I call bullshit. Considering how these images were presented to the public and accepted by many, and later even sold, the level of editing and composite work this photographer does (if she even exists as the person she claims to be) is grossly dishonest even if she never said she was a photo journalist. Nobody who takes photography seriously as a profession or way of showing the world would call what she did photography in the way the images implicitly are presented as being true to in her own blog post.

There's enough doubt here to wonder if she even made the trip or took any photos of a leopard at all.

Also worth noting that her own website, registered in July of 2022, has posts backdated to April and March of 2021, which is strange to say the least.

[shkkmo]

I think it is fine to encourage peope to be more clear about the provence of their work. Calling someone "grossly dishonest" for not doing it in the way you want is not productive and, frankly, seems like bullying.

> if she even exists as the person she claims to be

Now you are simply being mean for no reason. There is evidence that she has been submitting work under thus name for several years and nowhere does she claim anything about this linking to any real world identity.

https://annualphotoawards.com/winners/apa-2020/fine-art/

> Nobody who takes photography seriously as a profession

Which she doesn't. It is a side hobby, one which you have decided it is OK to bully her for because she isn't up to your professional standards.

Seriously, take a moment, pretend this isn't a stranger on the internet but one of your friends and have some fucking empathy.

[helloworld11]

Take a moment yourself and try not to react emotionally to a series of completely valid arguments. Were this some other context, or possibly were it a man accused of this, would you be so understanding?

The french magazine itself suspected that the photographer may not exist as a real person by that name. Given the many inconsistencias and empty spots in numerous parts of their work biography and the present circus, it's far from being "just mean" to speculate the same.

>Which she doesn't. It is a side hobby, one which you have decided it is OK to bully her for because she isn't up to your professional standards.

Im not bullying anybody. This is casual discussion here on this site, not emails or messages sent directly to this photographer.

What's more, whether a person does photography as a hobby or professionally doesn't change the very definitely gross dishonesty of presenting their work as something it wasn't to multiple major organizations, selling it to numerous buyers under that strongly implied presentation and then only later very vaguely admitting to some editing and some composite work (without specifying that these shots were composites even though they very clearly were) only because she was called out for it in extremely specific detail by a professional magazine's analysis.

So yes, I repeat, perfectly calmly, that this was indeed gross dishonesty. If you were one of the people who saw her work presented on Saatchi Art for over $1500 per print (a damn good price for a photo by a recent unknown), and then paid for it because your reading of her original narrative very strongly encouraged you to think of the photos as real and very unique nature photography examples, I doubt you'd have so much "fucking empathy" either.

For those of us who take photography seriously enough to try being as honest as possible about its provenance and disclosing how our editing process works for the sake of sustaining respect among the public for photographers, things like this self-serving photographer's implicit bullshittery are simply annoying. AI is already letting people simulate images with increasing accuracy and pass them off as real. Someone very publicly being mendacious by more traditional means doesn't help that for others who still want to have their hard-won profession taken seriously still.

[shkkmo]

> take a moment yourself and try not to react emotionally to a series of completely valid arguments. Were this some other context, or possibly were it a man accused of this, would you be so understanding?

Yes.

> The french magazine itself suspected that the photographer may not exist as a real person by that name. Given the many inconsistencias and empty spots in numerous parts of their work biography and the present circus, it's far from being "just mean" to speculate the same.

I think the article author is engaging in the exact same clickbait online bullying. They emailed asking for higher resolution copies, but either didn't bother to ask her if the photos were manipulated or decided to not include her response.

> For those of us who take photography seriously enough to try being as honest as possible about its provenance and disclosing how our editing process works for the sake of sustaining respect among the public for photographers, things like this self-serving photographer's implicit bullshittery are simply annoying. AI is already letting people simulate images with increasing accuracy and pass them off as real. Someone very publicly being mendacious by more traditional means doesn't help that for others who still want to have their hard-won profession taken seriously still.

If you actually want to help improve the culture around provenance disclosure, bullying minor artists is not a good way to do that.

[helloworld11]

The french magazine article wasn't clickbait. It makes a claim and then strongly backs it up with detailed analysis. Did you even read the whole thing? They first asked for jpeg copies that they received along with metadata and EXIF details. Some of these made them wonder, along with other things, so they asked for two original RAW file copies. and plainly state that she then didn't reply at all.

>If you actually want to help improve the culture around provenance disclosure, bullying minor artists is not a good way to do that.

You're right. bullying minor artists isn't a good thing to do for fostering a good artistic culture in this broad space. However, calling out artists who tacitly or even plainly lie to multiple organizations and private buyers for monetary gain is a very different thing. Giving those a free pass because they're supposedly amateurs definitely doesn't help anyone or anything honest. I made my reasoning for it very clear previously.

[jallen_dot_dev]

> Also worth noting that her own website, registered in July of 2022, has posts backdated to April and March of 2021, which is strange to say the least.

So if you register a new domain name, you have to go back and edit your site's publication dates to be on or after the date in your whois record? lol?

[helloworld11]

Well, if your site was created on that date according to ICANN records, and you have multiple posts implying that it existed before that, it's one more little piece of a wider pattern of misdirection such as the stuff discussed above. So yeah, it does seem a bit odd.

[jallen_dot_dev]

> if your site was created on that date according to ICANN records

But that's not what the record indicates. You are confusing the concepts of a site and a domain name. A name points to a site. A site can exist before a name is registered.

It looks like her site used to be hosted at studiokittiya.com[1] which was registered in 2020.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20211218023642/https://studiokit...

[helloworld11]

Honestly, thanks for the clarification.