I  am passionate about fine-art photography and have written articles promoting and defending photography as a fine art.  If you are not a photographer you might ask why someone would feel the need to defend it as a fine art.  Let me tell you.  The first time someone drew a picture of an antelope on the wall of a cave many eons ago, it was an attempt to show others what the artist had seen.  It was an attempt at telling the truth  those who saw it believed it for that reason.  Yet, over the many thousands of years since we learned those who drew could lie to us in ways that pleased us.  Today, we do not necessarily assume that what we see in a drawing is any version of any reality that ever existed.                 

Similarly, humans developed the ability to use language to describe events to tell others what had happened.   That is, to tell the truth of what happened on a given day.  Over time, writers learned to lie to us in ways that we found pleasant.  Just as with drawing, we have learned with writing to withhold our disbelief when we read fiction.   

In both literature and drawing, the form did not become a fine art until it could engender the full range of human emotions.  They make us feel something. They could not become a fine art until we let them, and we liked that they did.

Photography, too, was originally developed as a means of telling people the truth.  But, unlike literature or painting, lies are not tolerated in fine-art photography.  I still hear the inane question in galleries:  “Has that picture been Photoshopped?”.  If you are asking, “has that picture been incompetently edited in photo editing software,” then it is a relevant question.  Competency lies at the heart of any fine art.  If you can tell a picture has been edited, it has been done incompetently.  And, you should trust your eyes on this.  Everyday we see literally thousands of bits of advertising using images.  Nearly every one of them has been edited in a photo-editing program.  When it is done well, competent photo craftsmen will fool you every time. 

However, if you are asking the question because you prefer photography, particularly fine-art photography to always tell the truth, then you are limiting that art form, at least in your own mind, to dwell on the out skirts of the fine-arts. 

The fine arts are not about truth.  They are, instead, about the ability to engender emotion in those who consume them.  When you prevent us from lying to you in our photographs, we are forced to lie in response to your question “Has this photograph been Photoshopped.”  After all, we want to to show our art. We want for our art to be appreciated.  And, we want to sell you our art.  So yes, we lie to you.  Either we lie in our art in way's that please you, or, we lie to you in answer to your question.  You decide which  you prefer.

All we are asking is when you approach a photograph in a fine art gallery, the first question you ask is “Do I like it?”  the same question you ask of any other fine art.