Most people will acknowledge that the camera can be used as a powerful tool for telling lies. Harder to accept is that the camera, by its very nature, always lies, that it always misrepresents, distorts or manifests the hidden manipulation of its operator.
But it’s a truth ineluctable after spending time in the National Gallery of Art’s fascinating and provocative “I Spy: Photography and the Theater of the Street, 1938-2010.” The exhibition is devoted to six photographers who explored ways to photograph surreptitiously, or without intruding on the drama of their subjects’ private existence.