History of photoshopping from 1860 to present day

Dartmouth's Hany Farid ("working with federal law enforcement agencies on digital forensics, to the digital reconstruction of Ancient Egyptian tombs") has a great pictorial history of photo-tampering, beginning with this shot of Lincoln's head superimposed on Calhoun's body, going all the way up to the insertion of British Culture Secretary James Purnell into a group photo (he missed the shooting because he was late) in a newspaper in September, 2007.

circa 1860: This nearly iconic portrait of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is a composite of Lincoln's head and the Southern politician John Calhoun's body. Putting the date of this image into context, note that the first permanent photographic image was created in 1826 and the Eastman Dry Plate Company (later to become Eastman Kodak) was created in 1881.

Link (via Kottke)

[#1 posted by Practical Archivist , November 16, 2007 8:53 AM]

For more examples of Stalin's attempt to erase purged party members from history, there's a spooky cool book called The Commissar Vanishes. There's also a wiki entry about it.

The harder it gets to spot a fake, the more concerned I become as an archivist, a historian and citizen. Digital forensics is great, but what if all you have is a print?

[#2 posted by Register or be ignored , November 17, 2007 10:35 PM]

HA! HA!
I'm using Eastman Dry Plates!