Digital Doctoring: can we trust photographs?

H. Farid

In Deception: Methods, Motives, Contexts and Consequences, 2007

Paper (pdf)    Bibtex

We may have the impression that photography can no longer be trusted. From the tabloid magazine to the fashion industry to main-stream media outlets to political campaigns to the photo hoaxes that land in our email in-boxes, doctored photographs are appearing with a growing frequency and sophistication. The truth is, however, that photography lost its innocence many years ago. The nearly iconic portrait of the U.S. President Abraham Lincoln (circa 1860), for example, was a fake, and only the beginning of a long history of photographic trickery. I will briefly explore the history and more modern examples of photographic tampering and discuss recent technological advances that have the potential to return some trust to photographs.