Slashdot Mirror
The History of Lying With Images
An article at The Verge discusses a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art which traces the history of photo manipulation, starting in the mid-1800s. Early photographers used simple techniques like painting on their negatives or simply forming a composite image from many painstakingly framed shots. That period of time even had its own approximation of modern memes: "A large number of prints from that era — featuring decapitated subjects holding, juggling, or otherwise posing with their own heads — might be seen as the lolcats of their day, owing to an alluringly macabre and widespread fascination with parlour tricks and stage magic." However, lying with pictures really took off when business and government figured out how effective it could be as a tool for propaganda. The exhibit has many examples, such as President Ulysses S. Grant's head superimposed onto a soldier's body and a different background, or another of Joseph Goebbels removed from a photo of a party. The article likens these manipulations to more recent situations like the faked pictures of Osama Bin Laden's corpse, and often-hilarious altered ads featured on Photoshop Disasters. The article ends with a quote from photographer Jerry Uelsmann: "Let us not delude ourselves by the seemingly scientific nature of the darkroom ritual. It has been and always will be a form of alchemy."
Scott Mutter: A More Perfect World. Before there was Photoshop, there was Scott Mutter's Surrational World!
Wait until they get a load of the linguistic programming that has transpired...
Real estate. The scummiest "industry" that exists. Everything is image. Condos sold on image only.
Uelsmann is sort of a hero of mine. His images are boldly imaginative and technically impeccable. That he was able to create what he did in the pre-digital era is astonishing.
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The timing is seems to be pretty good for the photoshop fail of the Russian orthodox Church http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2126092/Watch-closely-Russian-church-apologises-Photoshop-fail-20-000-timepiece-disappears-wrist-Patriarch.html Although Nokias PureView was a pretty good one as well :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud0wbhUqX1Q
I started with Adobe CD (Creative Daguerreotype) alpha 0.4
The healing brush was a razor and skill. And jeez were gradient fills slow.
Silence is a state of mime.
http://www.philipcoppens.com/cottingley.html This is my favorite story of Photoshopping without Photoshop. I still don't get why many people believed those photos, especially Arthur Conan Doyle...
How do you know they didn't send men to the moon to create fake photos of a studio? It goes that deep. That's what she said.
Pretty any women's magazine cover and most of the photos inside will show you multiple ways of lying with images.
Manipulation--whether in the darkroom or with a computer--is only one of the ways images can mislead. Scenes may be staged. Even when they are not, framing an image in the viewfinder and deciding when to release the shutter determine what small bit of reality is rendered. It may or may not be an honest, representative sample. Every photographer knows that you don't need Photoshop to lie with a camera.
Of course, photos can be manipulated to deceive as well; it's all a matter of intent.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
How do you know they didn't send men to the moon to create fake photos of a studio? It goes that deep. That's what she said.
Yup. The hard part was getting that giant wind machine up there to make the flag flutter.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
about this subject (historical propaganda retouching) is titled "The Commisar Vanishes". New copies are a bit pricey but lots of example photo pairs are online.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Commissar-Vanishes-Falsification-Photographs/dp/0805052941
The tests are culturally biased but on average asian people score over 10% higher than white people, while blacks score over 10% lower.
I'm bringing this up because I'll bet over half of slashdotters can't have a rational discussion on these facts.
The famously creepy portrait of Stalin and Lenin was also in the exhibit: http://i.huffpost.com/gen/740931/thumbs/o-STALIN-570.jpg Stalin actually faked a lot of history. He lied himself to the top, but started as a simple thief and bagger. One can dismiss the idea, but not the effect.
~ Best man at your service.
We do have a remarkable propensity for trying to mislead one another don't we?
It's like the species, collectively, is a pathological liar.
Survival instinct + intelligence = interesting maneuvers.
Sir, you are implying that I cannot photoshop with the Gimp.
I CAN most definitely photoshop with the Gimp. I can do a better job of photoshopping with the Gimp than most persons can do with Photoshop. And I can always do it at less cost.
You are most definitely wrong, Sir. Photoshop is entirely unnecessary for photoshopping.
Will
They sent up huge tanks of helium as a gas for the wind machine to save weight, that's why it's so scarce now.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel