Truth claim, in photography, is a term Tom Gunning uses to describe the prevalent belief traditional photographs accurately depict reality.
[4] Levinson relates this characteristic of the photograph to its objectivity and reliability, echoing Andre Bazin's belief that photography is free from the "sin" of subjectivity.
[8] Gunning attributes the human fascination with photographs with a sense of the relationship between photography and reality, though he claims that the "perceptual richness and nearly infinite detail" of the image itself is more significant than a knowledge of its indexicality.
Since a picture confers on events "a kind of immortality (and importance) it would never otherwise have enjoyed,"[10] she explains, the act of taking photographs has become essential to the experience of world travel.
"[13] Postman suggests that the proliferation of photography led to the replacement of language with images as "our dominant means for constructing, understanding, and testing reality".
Levinson suggests that the digitisation of photography undermines "the very reliability of the photograph as mute, unbiased witness of reality"[20] because of the fallibility of technological manipulation and the potential for human refinement of production.
[4] Likewise, Martin Lister claims that even with a digital camera, "The images produced are rendered photo-realistic, they borrow photography's currency, its deeply historical 'reality effect', simply in order to have meaning.
He notes that the use of a lens, film, a particular exposure, kind of shutter, and developing process "...become magically whisked away if one considers the photograph as a direct imprint of reality.