PHOTOSHOP: THE (VERY) EARLY YEARS: The 1912 War on Fake Photos.

Concern about deceptively edited photos feels like a very modern anxiety, yet a century ago similar worries were being litigated…

Portrait photography gave rise to an industry of photo ‘retouching’ – analog ‘beauty filters’ – to flatter subjects in a way portrait painters once did. This trend lead to questions about technology distorting our perceptions of beauty, reality and truth:

An 1897 issue of the New-York Tribune would declare the assumption “Photographs Do Not Lie” an “exploded notion”, saying:

“…at the present time photographs may be and are made to lie with great frequency and facility.”

Other commercial applications of photo retouching emerged: in 1911 tourists visiting Washington D.C. could acquire fake photographs of themselves posing with then President of the United States William Taft. This troubled Government officials. Upon discovering the practice in 1911, a United States Attorney ordered it stopped:

Read to the end; the coda of the story is a hoot.