Photo Tampering: A History

Dating back to the development of photography, individuals have constantly been tampering with photographic images to suit their own needs. Photography, upon its conception was viewed as a medium that would accurately depict reality. It was believed that whatever the photographer saw through the lens of the camera would be produced onto a medium as a permanent representation of the image seen. That was a very utopic view of the act of photography, that with the development of technology became easily and frequently manipulated.

Firstly, the issue of staging a photograph becomes an issue. How the photographer chooses to capture an event or a person can be greatly different from how others interpret the same image. Likewise, a man's perspective is different than a woman's, a child's perspective is different than an adult's, a working class citizen's perspective is different than the bureaucracy's, etc. The many forms of perspective highlight the important issue of truth and the perception thereof.

Photography has now become more of an art form then a representation of reality. People are able to construct the makeup of a photograph to portray what they want. People or props can be added or removed from the photo, lighting can be changed, and with the development of newer technologies such as PhotoShop and airbrushing, there are endless opportunities to edit and manipulate photos.

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/

The meaning of a photograph depends on two things: the intended meaning of the photo by the photographer in conjunction with the interpretation of the viewer.Unfortunately, the combination of these two rarely represent the truth.




One of the original examples of a photo found to be manipulated was that of Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s. A photograph that appears to be a portrait of the American President, is actually a composite of Lincoln's head and the Southern politician's John Calhoun's body (as pictured above). What appears to be a striking portrait of the President, is not actually him at all. The reality is that an image presented to the public as a photograph of their President, is not actually a picture of the iconic president. The misrepresentation of Abraham Lincoln may have gone unnoticed if it weren't for citizens that took the pursuit of truth into their own hands.

Another early example of photo manipulation in the media is a photograph of Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, in which he routinely air-brushed his enemies out of photos. In the photograph shown below, a commissioner was removed from the original photograph after he fell out of favour with Stalin. At the time, it was found to be common for such leaders as Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Mao Tse-tung to remove enemies or people that fell out of favour with the powerful leaders to be removed. This is an example of how images can be structured to display a truth of their own, not reality. Stalin had the photo manipulated to show a photographic construction of himself as a powerful leader by not including any people that fell out of favour with him. It is because of citizens interested in the truth, not in what is simply presented to them as truth, that the reality of these photos had been discovered.



Active citizens in the public sphere discovered the truth about the images of Abraham Lincoln and Joseph Stalin to facilitate a society that favours reality over representation. This was a large historic step forward for the public sphere.