ABSTRACT
This chapter examines deepfakes through the history of photography and post-production technology. It argues that the development of daguerreotypes, film cameras, copyright law and deepfakes must be situated as part of the technological developments inspired, fostered and then normalized through the violence of US empire. Dominant operations of race, gender and coloniality are paralleled in technological progressions of image-making and sight. Thus, the chapter argues against treating deepfakes as isolated to cultural production, but symptomatic to how the manifestations of power in culture has and continues to operate. Rather than creating new software detection programs to combat deepfakes, it suggests examining the hardware upon which software continues to be built, particularly the analog and digital camera, and the definition of subject and object in copyright law. The fakes of the past and the untruths of coloniality must be upended in order to arrive at truthful images in contemporary society.
