15 Photo Manipulations Before the Digital Age

 

While digital photography and image-editing software have brought about an increased awareness of the degree to which camera images can be manipulated, the practice of doctoring photographs has existed since the medium was invented. Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the first major exhibition devoted to the history of manipulated photography before the digital age.

Featuring some 200 visually captivating photographs created between the 1840s and 1990s in the service of art, politics, news, entertainment, and commerce, the exhibition offers a provocative new perspective on the history of photography as it traces the medium’s complex and changing relationship to visual truth.

The photographs in the exhibition were altered using a variety of techniques, including multiple exposure (taking two or more pictures on a single negative), combination printing (producing a single print from elements of two or more negatives), photomontage, overpainting, and retouching on the negative or print. In every case, the meaning and content of the camera image was significantly transformed in the process of manipulation.

The first major exhibition devoted to history of manipulated photography before the digital age opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on October 11, 2012. It will run until January 27, 2013. For more information please visit:
 
http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/press-room/exhibitions/2012/faking-it

 

 

 

 

 

Unknown Artist, American School
Man on Rooftop with Eleven Men in Formation on His Shoulders
ca. 1930
Gelatin silver print
Collection of George Eastman House
Photo Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

 

 

 

Grete Stern
Sueño No. 1: “Articulos eléctricos para el hogar” | Dream No. 1: “Electrical Appliances for the Home”
ca. 1950
Gelatin silver print
Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2012
Courtesy of Galería Jorge Mara – La Ruche, Buenos Aires

 

 

 

 

 

Unknown Artist, German School
A Powerful Collision
1910s Gelatin silver print The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Funds from various donors, 2010
Photo Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

 

 

 

Maurice Tabard (French, Lyons 1897–1984 Nice)
Roger Parry (French, 1905–1977)
Room with Eye
1930
Gelatin silver print
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1962
Photo Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

 

 

 

Unknown Artist, Russian
Lenin and Stalin in Gorky, 1922
1949
Gelatin silver print with applied media
Ryna and David Alexander
Photo Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

 

 

 

Unknown Artist, American
Dirigible Docked on Empire State Building, New York
1930
Gelatin silver print
Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2011
Photo Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

 

 

 

Barbara Morgan (American, 1900–1992)
Hearst Over the People
1939
Collage of gelatin silver prints with applied media
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Photo Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

 

 

 

Unknown Artist, American
Two-Headed Man
ca. 1855
Daguerreotype
Nelson-Atkins Museum
Photo Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

 

 

 

Henry Peach Robinson (English, 1830–1901)
Fading Away
1858
Albumen silver print from glass negatives
The Royal Photographic Society at the National Media Museum
Photo Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

 

 

 

William Henry Jackson (American, 1843–1942)
Colorado Springs, Colorado
ca. 1913
Collage of gelatin silver prints with applied media
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Photo Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

 

 

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820–1884)
Cloud Study
1856-1857
Albumen silver print from glass negatives
Maurice Sendak
The Estate of Maurice Sendak

 

 

 

 

 

George Washington Wilson (Scottish, 1823–1893)
Aberdeen Portraits No. 1
1857
Albumen print from glass negative
The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2011
Photo Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

 

 

 

F. Holland Day (American, Norwood, Massachusetts 1864–1933 Norwood, Massachusetts)
The Vision (Orpheus Scene)
1907
Platinum print
National Media Museum
Photo Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

 

 

 

Maurice Guibert (French, 1856–1913)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, Albi 1864–1901 Saint-André-du-Bois)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec as Artist and Model
1892
Gelatin silver print
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Henry P. Mcllhenny, 1982-14-2
Photo Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

 

 

 

Saint Thomas D’Aquin
Man Juggling His Own Head
De Torbéchet, Allain & C.
ca. 1880
Albumen silver print.
Collection of Christophe Goeury
Photo Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art