ABSTRACT
Photo Manipulation At some point in history, people came to recognize that it was incorrect to say “the camera never lies.” Since the 1800s, shortly after the invention of the still camera, photographs began to lie. They were manipulations of reality when they were posed, when they were dodged and burned in the darkroom, when they were cropped, when they were printed, when they were distributed. A famous 1860s photo of Abraham Lincoln was contrived in the darkroom, where Lincoln’s head was attached to John Calhoun’s body. Many of Civil War photographer Matthew Brady’s iconic battlefield scenes were not what they appeared to be: Brady frequently rearranged bodies and weapons-and even switched Union and Confederate uniforms on dead soldiers-to make powerful visual statements. Throughout the twentieth century, people were added to or deleted from parades and staged events depending upon the whims of those in power. Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mao Tse-tung, and Fidel Castro were not the only leaders to move friends into-and enemies out of-sight.
