Doctored photos: 20 memorable picture fakes
By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 8:01pm BST 04/09/2008
The doctoring of photos, once considered the reserve of tyrants and UFO nuts,
is becoming increasingly widespread.
With
photo-editing software becoming ever more sophisticated, and the
internet allowing instant distribution, it has never been easier to
create and spread hoax images.
Below we present 20
of the most striking, interesting and controversial fake photos, most
of them produced in the last five years.
Some were created to amuse, some to mislead, while others were an attempt to
rewrite history.
And
although the credulity of the internet has been blamed for allowing
hoax photos to flourish, several of the fakes below were actually
uncovered by bloggers after being distributed by mainstream media
outlets.
1) Shark lunges at helicopter
This
striking fake was created by merging two separate images - a US Air
Force helicopter on a training exercise in San Francisco, and a great
white shark leaping out of the water off the cost of South Africa.
The
hoax emerged in 2001, and was later circulated via email with a caption
claiming it showed a shark attacking British Navy crew in South Africa,
despite the fact that the Golden Gate Bridge is visible in the
background.
2) World Trade Centre tourist
This
hoax emerged on the internet just weeks after the Sept 11 attack.
Although rational assessment of the picture quickly reveals its flaws
(how could the tourist not hear the plane? how did his camera
survive?), the horror of the scenario and the rawness of America's
wounds gave the image a huge emotional impact.
It also sparked a flurry of tongue-in-cheek parodies featuring the same tourist
pasted into ever more preposterous situations.
3) Iranian missile test
Tehran's
Revolutionary Guards wanted the test firing of nine ballistic missiles
in July this year to send a message to the world. So when one of the
missiles failed to launch, they released a doctored photo with the
faulty launcher removed and one of the successful rockets copied and
pasted in its place.
Unfortunately
for the Guards the original launch photo, complete with grounded
missile, had already been published in an Iranian newspaper, and the
crude deception was revealed to great amusement in the West..
4) Ann Widdecombe's mixed messages
Ed
Matts, the Tory candidate for Dorset South, hoped a photo of him and
popular former minster Ann Widdecombe holding signs calling for tighter
immigration controls would endear him to voters ahead of the 2005
general election.
But the plan backfired when it
emerged that he had doctored to messages on the signs for his election
literature, and that in the original photo the pair were actually
holding placards calling for a family of failed asylum seekers to be
allowed to stay in Britain.
Ms Widdecombe defended the Tory candidate, saying that she was "happy to be
associated with either message".
5) Chairman Mao airbrushes out his former friends
The
Chinese Communist leader had no scruples about re-writing history to
suit his current circumstances. He arranged to have Po Ku, a former
ally with whom he had fallen out, removed from the official version of
the photo above.
And
Mao's photoshopping tendencies lived on even after his death. This
photo of a memorial service held for the leader in 1976 was later
altered to remove the so-called "Gang of Four", the political clique
who were subsequently charged with treason.
6) Snowball the monster cat
This
photo of an enormous cat spread around the world over email in 2000,
sometimes accompanied by a background story claiming that the mother of
the animal had grown up near a Canadian nuclear lab.
It wasn't until the following year that the man in the photo came forward to
admit he'd faked the image on his computer.
Cordell
Hauglie had sent the photo to friends as a joke, not expecting it to
circulate more widely.. The cat did exist, and belonged to Mr Hauglie's
daughter, but weighed only 1.5 st.
7) Smoke over Beirut
The
Reuters news agency withdrew this photo showing bomb damage in Beirut
during the 2006 Lebanon War after bloggers pointed out that repeat
patterns in the smoke looked like they had been created by Adobe
Photoshop's "clone" tool, with the effect of exaggerating the effects
of the Israeli assault.
The altered photo
Reuters
admitted that it had been doctored by Adnan Hajj, the Lebanese
freelancer who took the original photo, and have since removed all his
images from their archive. Bloggers have accused Hajj of manipulating
other photos during the conflict.
The original
8) Antelopes and trains in harmony
This
image of a herd of Tibetan antelopes running undisturbed beneath a
train on the new Qinghai–Tibet railway was released by Xinhua, the
Chinese state news agency, as evidence that the controversial
high-speed line was not damaging the environment.
It
was named "most memorable news photo of the year" by China Central
Television, but after users of a photography website pointed out flaws
in the image, the photographer Liu Weiqiang admitted that he had
created it but stitching together two separate pictures.
9) Tsunami captured from tower block
This
extraordinary image was sent to inboxes across the world shortly after
the 2004 tsunami, along with a caption claiming it was taken moments
before the huge wave swamped Phuket in Thailand.
But
the photo was a fraud on both counts - the seafront was actually that
of the Chilean city of Antofagasta, and the wave had been digitally
added. The Asian tsunami, while deadly, did not produce towering waves
of the type portrayed in the image.
10) Bush reading upside down
This
photo of George W Bush holding a picture book the wrong way up during a
visit to a school delighted some opponents of the Republican president,
and helped foster his buffoonish image.
But
press photos from the event in 2002 revealed that Mr Bush had been
holding the book correctly - hoaxers had simply used photo editing
software to rotate the cover.
11) Shark sneaks up on scuba divers
This
photo was an submitted as an entry for an online photo-editing contest
on the theme of "Vacation Bloopers", but was then spread around the web
by email with an accompanying blurb claiming it was taken by the
pictured couple's son during a scuba diving holiday in Australia.
The
narrative claimed that the boy's parents refused to believe they had
been so close to a shark until they had the pictures developed.
12) John Kerry with Jane Fonda
The
2004 Democratic presidential candidate was a known anti-Vietnam
activist, so the idea that he shared a podium with actress and peace
campaigner Jane Fonda wasn't too far-fetched.
But
the photo that circulated around the web in election year was a fake, a
composite of two other images. Ken Light, who took the original photo,
said that the doctoring "tells us more about the troublesome
combination of Photoshop and the Internet than it does about the
prospective Democratic candidate for president."
13) Giant skeletons discovered in India
The
National Geographic Society still receives inquiries about this photo,
which was published in an Indian newspaper in 2007 to support an
article claiming that the Society's archaeologists had discovered the
remains of giant humans.
The photo, which had
been created in jest as past of a photo-editing competition, had been
circulating on blogs and conspiracy websites for many years.
14) Benito Mussolini, the fearless horseman
The sword-wielding Italian fascist leader had the horse handler removed from
this portrait, to give him amore heroic aspect.
15) Karl Rove's 'secret file'
When
this image of George W Bush's top adviser leaving a restaurant carrying
a file marked "Coptix" emerged on the web, it appeared to confirm
rumours of a secret White House email system used for nefarious
purposes.
But the image was a prank knocked
together by staff at Coptix - a web firm whose named had been
incorrectly linked to the alleged email system - and bloggers who had
seized on the photo as evidence of a sinister Republican network were
forced to eat humble pie.
For the record, Rove had been at the restaurant - a BBQ eatery called Porkers -
but was not carrying any folder.
16) James Purnell doctored at hospital
In
2007 the then Culture Secretary James Purnell, who led the Government's
attack on the BBC's rigged phone-in competitions, was caught up in a
faking controversy of his own after his image was digitally added to a
line-up of MPs outside a hospital.
Mr Purnell had
arrived too late to take part in the photo shoot, and agreed to the
photoshopping because he didn't want to let anyone down, his spokesman
said. "In retrospect it wasn't a great idea," he added.
17) Soldier doll held hostage in Iraq
An
insurgent group calling itself the Al Mujahedeen Brigade posted this
photo of a man it claimed was a US soldier called John Adam in 2005,
threatening to behead him unless Iraqi prisoners were released.
The
group's claims made the press, until a toy firm executive came forward
and said the pictured soldier was actually one of its action dolls,
known as "Special Ops Cody".
18) Fidel Castro made to look like Hitler
When
this photo showing the Cuban leader with dark, sleek hair and a
Hitler-style moustache was published in a Cuban newspaper, Communist
officials went into a panic, scurrying around the island to seize
copies before they could be sold.
Although the
exact details about what happened are unclear, it appears the front
page photo was digitally altered by an anti-Castro member of staff at
the Granma newspaper.
19) Oil rig, tornado and lightning strike
This
dramatic storm scene has been circling the web in various forms for
years. The twister-lightning combination is a genuine photo, taken by
an amateur photographer in Florida in 1993, but the oil rig was pasted
from a separate picture.
20) Cottingley Fairies
One
of the earliest ever photo hoaxes, and arguably the most famous.
Cousins Elsie Wright, 16, and Frances Griffiths, 10, claimed to have
photographed a group of fairies near their home in Bradford in 1917.
The
cousins insisted they had met the fairies for decades, despite a
growing consensus that they were cardboard cut-outs. In 1981 the
cousins admitted they had faked the photos.
