They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Can that actually really be true? When you think about it today, pictures can be more than a million words. From the state of the original photo, before all the retouching, shading, filters, etc. all the way through to the finished product, so many things can be said and seen. Every picture has an intial story until someone comes along to take over the role of storyteller in which they manipulate and re-tell the story from their personal projection. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently featuring an exhibition aptly called, Faking It, showcasing all different works of photography from the 1840’s to the early 90’s where what you see may not veritably be what you see.
With various techniques of fabrication like overpainting, combination printing, superimposition, and the process of photomontage to name a few, it’s been unveiled that humans have been distorting images for far longer than we think. With so many words and so many stories buried deep inside these photographs, which will you choose to believe?
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