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The Alternate Reality of Pedro Meyer
By Ben de la Cruz In Spanish
He remembers the past, but prefers the future. He is part photographer, part philosopher. As a long-time practitioner of traditional documentary, he understands the ethics of presenting digitally altered images as journalism. But as a native Mexican, reared in a culture fascinated by mythical realism, Pedro Meyer, now 65, would rather argue how using digital photos can better represent truth.
To use his words, Meyer was one of the first to "swim from the shores of analog photography to those of the digital world." One of his early forays into digital – his 1993 CD-ROM titled "Truths and Fiction" – arguably started the modern day debate on digital manipulation. He hasn't looked back since. His primary occupation today is the critically acclaimed Web site ZoneZero, a name formed by combining "one" and "zero," the numeric building blocks for digital information.
ZoneZero is his gift to the future of photography. Started when he lived in Los Angeles, and now produced in his homeland, the site functions as a forum for his ideas on the evolving relationship between photographers and their digital tools. One of his favorite themes, presented in his essay, "Refining Documentary Photography," is that digital photography deceives no less than a story, film or soundtrack.
"All those other mediums had always been edited and were malleable to the nth degree," Meyer writes. The alteration of images preceded by decades the advent of digital tools like Photoshop. "Not that one could not alter documentary images, just ask the Soviets about all they did in this respect. I sustain that photography always lived a life of false pretenses."
ZoneZero also presents the work of the leading practitioners of traditional documentary and digitally altered photography. Looking through the galleries, at times, it's impossible to distinguish between straight and altered images. It seems obvious, yes, when ice the color of glacier blue looks like its hardening in a freezer instead of melting in a room straight out of One Hundred Years of Solitude. But then you think again: why couldn't it be real? Which is exactly the point.
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 ©Pedro Meyer 2001
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