Putting aside the discussion about these particular photographs... There are clear lines, especially for certain types of photography. For things like reportage, documentary and true nature photography, the simplest rule is to represent reality, without addition, removal or significant alteration. In these circles even significantly cropping a photo can be seen as manipulative. Dodging and burning is mostly seen as processing, not material change to the photograph.
But importantly the rule is to not lie about the reality the photo depicts. Nature photography is as much about the effort or the hunt as it is the photo, so honest is key. Other photos have been removed from competitions and stripped of prizes due to misrepresentation, from editing to using tame animals. You can edit the photo's appearance through post processing of exposure, sharpness, etc... it is the subject that is important. Lying about the subject invalidates the photo.
Until the disclaimer was added there was no way to tell these photos were fake. On the contrary, there was a whole story-telling about how she made this difficult trip and suddenly saw what she was looking for in a magical moment, which supports the idea that this was genuine animal photography.
It is therefore no surprise that people assumed these photos were real and now feel deceived.
Even now that she added this disclaimer, she is antyhing but clear as to what is actually real or not. Are we speaking of editing and composite as in "I took a great photo and just added a few rocks here and removed a cloud there to make it cooler" or in "I built this whole landscape and then added a snow leopard on top of it"?
She claims she genuinely photographied the snow leopard, but this is very unlikely and the deception already identified makes it difficult to believe her.
Edit: reading more carefully she claims she saw "what she was looking for" which you would obviously interpret as a snow leopard, but is vague enough to offer her yet again another opportunity to say she "never said that".
You can suspend your disbelief in the most inane shit for a movie, but this form of art you just can't do it?
The whole point is deceiving people into believing those are real pictures when they are not. She received huge exposure in major newspapers, specialist magazines, social media, even the American embassy because of this (and sold many prints). She enjoyed that attention, even reblogged the article from the Times of London, without ever correcting anybody about the actual nature of her work.
Had she been forthright about the fact that the pictures were fake, she never would have received such attention. The picture still look cool in their own right, but we would be far from the incredible achievement that such picture would represent if they were real.
As Munier said: "I’ve got nothing against this type of creation, but it has to be presented as such".
People need to relax. She's 24 and getting death threats over what?
I mean worst case is she lied about photoshopping a picture? Yeah, so did Victoria Secret and EVERY SINGLE OTHER MEDIA PUBLICATION IN THE WORLD.
National Geographic did it for christ's sake...
Everyone here jumping down her fucking throat, out for blood. "Actually you lied, myehhh, this is bad and you're a bad person"
Like fuck off, I think she's well within her right to represent her art this way. Just because other publications continue to rip off artists for easy content and do very little research on their own doesn't mean she's doing anything wrong.
I think a disclaimer would remove a lot from the art. ARG's don't provide disclaimers, it adds to it. Especially in the early days of the internet "Is it, or is it not?" Is a fun game to play.
Also, nobody was hurt. This isn't disinformation in the sense you're telling people that jews run the world or that vaccines cause autism. Nobody is getting hurt. They're fun pictures. She told a cute ambiguous story. She has like 1000 followers. Everyone can just relax already.
I'd be much more concerned with publications that find random imagery and use it uncritically, how worse would it get when generative visuals go really mainstream?
Is it a photograph of a snow leopard with some alterations in post processing or is it a photograph of a mountain range with a snow leopard inserted after. That is the line.
All photos are edited, the act of saving a pattern of light onto a film or digital sensor itself is a form of editing. The choice of camera, lens and parameters is a form of editing by itself.
Very, very little photography that you will ever see is untouched - from mild tweaking of curves to complete recomposition. This is what photoshop is for.
Ansel Adams, for example, used to dodge and burn extensively when printing, and is viewed as a master of the art - he was mostly really good at upping the drama by amplifying or outright inventing chiaroscuro.
Where does the line lie? Well, it depends on who your friends are.