Photography Changes What We Are Willing To Believe

H. Farid

Smithsonian Photography Initiative, 2008

Commentary (pdf)

Early in his career, Southern politician John Calhoun was a strong supporter of slavery. So it is ironic that an iconic portrait of Abraham Lincoln (circa 1860) is a photographic composite of Calhoun's body and Lincoln's head, purportedly created because no sufficiently heroic-style portrait of Lincoln had yet been taken. Perhaps what is most remarkable about this composite is that it was created only a few decades after Joseph Nicephore Niepce created the first permanent photograph in the summer of 1826. Although we may have the impression that photographic tampering is something relatively new - a product of the digital age - the reality is that history is riddled with photographic fakes.