Re-Imaging History

Here’s something covering what Marcus has mentioned on a few occasions recently – the manipulation of photographs through history. The first is an infamous example of the Soviet Union’s propaganda department under Stalin’s rule removing people from images, showing at least four people cut out of a picture, but there are plenty more examples. What’s especially interesting is the amount of work and detail the Soviet Union put into their photo manipulation, whereas some of the other examples, especially “Smudged Away“, are pretty awful examples of manipulation.

It also shows us that many people have few qualms when it comes to manipulating the truth in order to further dramatise events if it means more attention and greater draw/sales – but then again, that has to be obvious to anyone who has ever seen an image of a suspected paedophile in a newspaper. It never fails to amaze me that criminals have never had a good, high quality image of them ever taken in their life.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredphotos54/