Photographic Truth
The contested assumption that a photograph is a reliable record of what was in front of the camera.
In depth
Photographs have been staged, retouched and misleadingly captioned since the 1850s, so the assumption was never simply true — but it was strong enough to carry evidential weight. Generative imaging strains it further, which is why provenance standards that cryptographically record a file's origin and edit history are being adopted.
Examples in practice
A frame is technically unmanipulated and still misleading because its caption places it in the wrong context.