One of the most contentious topics of the new century is the extent to which boundaries between such concepts as fiction, nonfiction, truth and fabrication have relaxed and what the social ramifications of such slippage has been or is likely to be.

		Previous articles Photo Exhibit Preview: Carnegie Museum exhibition stakes a claim for Luke Swank's place in history Book Review: 'Luke Swank: Modernist Photographer'/ Luke Swank's photos are brought out of the shadows

The recent flap over James Frey's falsified memoir is only the most recent outburst prompted by like violations of once understood genre rules. Analysis of moral relativism, once limited to the domain of theoreticians, is fodder for Christian radio talk-show hosts. The subject of the just-opened off-Broadway play "(I Am) Nobody's Lunch," is, according to a New York Times critic, "the elusiveness of truth in a culture swamped with stuff that looks, sounds and smells like information."

Daily we are bombarded with information -- aural, textual and visual -- and the way it's received is as significant as the way it's presented. In light of this, the development of a critical eye and ear is essential.

Such issues were addressed Saturday at Carnegie Museum of Art in "Whose Truth Is It? An Examination of Photography and Creative Nonfiction," a program inspired by the current exhibition "Luke Swank: Modernist Photographer."

Lectures were presented by Howard Bossen, curator of the exhibition and author of its accompanying book, who is professor of journalism and adjunct curator of the Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, and Lee Gutkind, founder and editor of the journal Creative Nonfiction and professor of English, University of Pittsburgh. The audience of about 50 then participated in a discussion moderated by Judith Schachter, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Center for the Arts in Society.

Bossen illustrated the potential subjectivity of imagery using examples from the history of photography. The credibility that a camera bestows upon its subject was understood and employed from the medium's earliest days, and while some took advantage of that to deceive, most used the variables of the lens for expression -- as another way of capturing literal truth.

Fact, Bossen said, is something that has actual existence; truth is something perceived as a fundamental or actual reality. Although his subject matter was conventional, Swank, through his vision, "transferred the ordinary into an extraordinary, poetic world," Bossen said.

The exhibition itself is quite splendid, and one of the finest photography exhibitions one is likely to encounter. This is due in no small part to the fortunate combination of a diligent historian/curator and rich material worthy of attention.

Swank (1890-1944), a Johnstown native who moved to Pittsburgh in the mid-1930s, was atypical in that he worked in other occupations and came to photography as a profession relatively late. At one time complimented by the likes of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston and included in major museum exhibitions, his name faded from photographic history until Bossen came across Swank's work in the Carnegie's collection and began a lengthy research commitment that ultimately rescued the photographer from obscurity.

The exhibition comprises 141 mostly vintage photographs, presented in six sections: Steel, Circus, People, Transformations, Rural Architecture and Landscape, and This Is My City. Within each, the visitor gains a feeling for Swank's depth of vision and, altogether, a sense of his breadth of interest.

The work conveys an acute awareness -- conscious and probably also subconscious -- of how the world was unfolding in his time and of the power his medium had to render aspects of that world.

"Steel," for example, comprises at least three subsets of subject treatment while also illustrating his stylistic change from softer, romanticized pictorialism to a sharp-focused abstract modernist aesthetic. There are the mills -- venting smoke, mammoth in scale, powerful and formidable -- dominating the landscape like active volcanoes. There are mills abstracted to clean geometry against open sky, their bulk sculptural and almost silent. And there are the laborers within them, bathed in the glow of fire or sunlight streaming through high windows, simultaneously empowered and diminished by their intense cavernous environment.

In "Circus," people appear behind the scenes in down time ("Man Lying on Hay"), in character ("Balloon Vendor") or as an integral part of an abstracted composition ("Three Workers with Ropes and Tents").

Swank had a large, encompassing story to tell with a continually shifting beginning and end -- a visual rendering of his time and place -- and he suitably individualized the chapters.

"Amish School Girls" perch on a split rail fence in Lancaster County as generations before them did, and the image is shot traditionally, while the subject and composition of "Looking at a Man through a Car Window" emit modernity and a fast-forwarding mobile world.

In photographs such as "We Serve Fort Pitt Beer," Swank used shadow and light to dramatic effect, while others, such as "Legs, Gourds, and Shadows," are entirely about shadow and light.

It's a loss that Swank didn't live long enough to complete his story, but thanks to Bossen, we may all benefit from the portion that was recorded.

"Swank" continues through Feb. 5. Also showing is "Witness to the Fifties: Selections from the Pittsburgh Photographic Library, 1950-1953." Information: 412-622-3131 or www.cmoa.org.