What a marvel the first photographic images must have been to their early-19th-century viewers — the crisp, unassailable reality of scenes and events, unfiltered by an artist’s paintbrush or point of view.
And what an opportunity for manipulation. It didn’t take long for schemers to discover that with a little skill and imagination, photographic realism could be used to create manufactured realities.
And what an opportunity for manipulation. It didn’t take long for schemers to discover that with a little skill and imagination, photographic realism could be used to create manufactured realities.
“The very nature of photography was to record events,” said Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at Dartmouth University and a detective of photographic fakery. “You’d think there would have been a grace period of respect for this new technology.”
But the tampering began almost immediately: affixing Lincoln's head to another politician’s more regally posed body; re-arranging the grim detritus of Civil War battlefields to be better composed for the camera; erasing political enemies.
But the tampering began almost immediately: affixing Lincoln's head to another politician’s more regally posed body; re-arranging the grim detritus of Civil War battlefields to be better composed for the camera; erasing political enemies.
Sorting icons of truth from icons of propaganda is often a thorny business that can take decades to resolve, and that’s if it gets resolved. The long-argued case of Robert Capa's shocking “Falling Soldier” of 1936, taken during the Spanish Civil War, has recently flared again. Is this a loyalist soldier in his fatal moment, or is it staged? A Spanish researcher has scrutinized the terrain in the photo’s background and determined that it is not an area near Cerro Muriano, as Capa had said, but another spot, about 35 miles away. Whether this forces the conclusion that the scene was acted out is being debated with fresh vigor. (Critics have raised doubts about the photo since the 1970s.)
Questions dogged Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning shot of Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima from the start — the result of a conversation overheard and misunderstood, according to Hal Buell, who wrote a book about the image.
The photo was a sensation when it appeared in newspapers in the States. Back on the war front, someone asked Mr. Rosenthal if his picture had been staged. The photographer, who did not know which frame had been published, said yes — referring to a different picture of those same Marines whooping it up for the camera at Mr. Rosenthal’s request.
TIME magazine prepared an article about the alleged set-up that was never published, but details leaked out and went viral in the manner of the day. Mr. Buell, the retired head of the Associated Press photo service, says that despite film of the whole event proving the authenticity of Mr. Rosenthal’s work, a whiff of controversy stubbornly lives on.
One famous photo has been subject to a mundane form of fakery that it can’t seem to shake, years later. The photographer John Paul Filo caught the death of a Kent State student and the anguished reaction it provoked in a young bystander, and won the Pulitzer Prize for it. But the editors of Life magazine saw room for improvement, removing a post from behind the bystander’s head to tidy things up a bit.
One famous photo has been subject to a mundane form of fakery that it can’t seem to shake, years later. The photographer John Paul Filo caught the death of a Kent State student and the anguished reaction it provoked in a young bystander, and won the Pulitzer Prize for it. But the editors of Life magazine saw room for improvement, removing a post from behind the bystander’s head to tidy things up a bit.
The altered image has been published and republished, Mr. Filo lamented, despite his protests. “The picture keeps on living and working,” he said. Here is a gallery of historic images, identified by Dr. Farid and other sources, that have been manipulated or accused of being frauds.
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