With the widespread use of Photoshop among photographers, graphic designers and other image creators, it seems like a new art form has developed. The creations begin life as photographs, but are highly manipulated using digital compositing and digital painting techniques. The results really can’t be called photographs, because the final image is often more digital painting than photograph. A new word is needed for this new art form. We are nominating the word fauxtographs when referring to the resulting work .
I searched on Google for use of the word fauxtograph to see how it is being used.
The Urban Dictionary defines fauxtograph as follows:
In today’s world of computer manipulated images, it’s sometimes hard to tell reality from fake. A photograph that has been digitally altered so that it no longer reflects reality is a fauxtograph. Faux is French for “fake” or “false”. Can be shortened to fauxto (pronounced foe-toe)
“Did you see that fauxtograph that’s floating around the internet of a man with a duck’s head?”
There is a photographer in Florida, Rene Griffith, who started creating imagery years ago that was half photograph, half painting that she called fauxtographs using a vintage Polaroid SX-70 camera. She was an artist way ahead of her time.
So it seems that fauxtograph might be a good word to describe these photographs turned paintings. Then the artist would be called a fauxtographer who would be practicing the art of fauxtography.
The only problem I see is that the words photograph and fauxtograph are homophones–they are pronounced the same but spelled differently. This could lead to some confusion when speaking.
