Infamously Altered Photos, Before and After Their Edits

The Bronx Documentary Center exhibits 150 years of Photoshopped, manipulated, and posed photojournalism.
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November 2008. Kim Jong-il poses with soldiers of the 534th unit of the People’s Army. Western publications suspected Jong-il was digitally inserted into the photo. Rumors had been circulating that he had fallen ill or died, but the Korea Central News Agency released images showing their leader healthy and active.Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service/AP

Photographers have been altering images long before Photoshop. One of the earliest examples of international photojournalism–Crimean War photographer Roger Fenton’s 1855 image of a bombed-out landscape in Ukraine–was staged. "This [photograph] is the granddaddy of [what] we do," says veteran photojournalist Michael Kamber, "and yet there’s a version with cannonballs on the road and a version without cannonballs."

Kamber has curated an exhibit of more than 40 doctored photos in Altered Images: 150 Years of Posed and Manipulated Documentary Photography at The Bronx Documentary Center. The show digs through history to highlight images that broke the basic rules of photojournalism: Don’t direct the scene; don’t drastically alter in the post-processing; and don’t change the context in the captions. The images underscore the elusive, slippery quality of truth when it comes to photography.

Bronx Documentary Center

Some examples are obvious deceptions. In 1945, Russian photographer Yevgeny Khaldei had his uncle sew a Communist flag from an old tablecloth, then flew to the defeated German capital of Berlin just to take a picture of Soviet soldiers raising it symbolically over the Reichstag. In 2008, The Korean Central News Agency released a photo of Kim Jong-il digitally inserted in front of Korean troops, even though he was rumored to be deathly ill at the time. And in 2012, National Review published a cover showing President Obama speaking to crowd at the Democratic National Convention, all holding blue "ABORTION" signs which originally read "FORWARD." The photograph was attributed to Reuters, but National Review publisher Jack Fowler later admitted they altered the signs.

More often that not, marketing is why photographs get altered–especially when it comes to magazine covers optimized for newsstand sales. In one of the first major cases of digital manipulation, National Geographic squeezed a photograph of the Pyramids of Giza so the whole scene would fit on its 1982 cover. When this action came to light, it deeply embarrassed the publication. TIME had a similar situation with its OJ Simpson cover in 1994. It featured a mugshot of the subject weirdly darkened to evoke a "dramatic tone," as TIME’s photo illustrator Matt Mahurin later explained. It might have been an error in judgement–given the racially charged environment surrounding the murder–but was it actually wrong? Photographers use lighting to set a mood, and cover images have to be powerful if they’re going to grab readers' attention. Where is the line?

Whether a magazine cover or a documentary image, Kamber believes it isn't acceptable to alter a photo. "People have to be able to believe, 'I’m seeing this picture, this picture was vetted by a professional, it really happened, and it happened as I’m seeing it in front of me,'" he says. "Once you start making it permissible that editors and photographers can change things, you get to a point where nothing means anything anymore. What are you going to believe in? You have to question every single magazine or newspaper photo that you see."

This becomes especially true when a photo can be drastically altered with a click of a mouse, making it even more tempting to make small (and large) improvements. Journalism ethics have given way to getting images out first and fast.

Kamber thinks one way to minimize the problem is for established professionals to do a better job of mentoring the next generation so that journalistic images remain as close to reality as possible. "When I was starting out, I would come in with a roll of negatives and my editor would see the whole roll," Kamber says. "A lot of photographers are out there on their own and I think they do want to get it right. We need to give them the means to do that."

Altered Images: 150 Years of Posed and Manipulated Documentary Photography is showing at The Bronx Documentary Center until August 2.

UPDATE: 1:13 EST 07/30/15. A caption in an earlier version of this article stated Kim Jong-il died in 2008. Though suspected of suffering from a stroke at the time, he actually passed away in 2011.