What do you think?
Rate this book
Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop
Photographic manipulation is a familiar phenomenon in the digital era. What will come as a revelation to readers of this captivating, wide-ranging book is that nearly every type of manipulation we associate with Adobe’s now-ubiquitous Photoshop software was also part of photography’s predigital repertoire, from slimming waistlines and smoothing away wrinkles to adding people to (or removing them from) pictures, not to mention fabricating events that never took place. Indeed, the desire and determination to modify the camera image are as old as photography itself—only the methods have changed.
By tracing the history of manipulated photography from the earliest days of the medium to the release of Photoshop 1.0 in 1990, Mia Fineman offers a corrective to the dominant narrative of photography’s development, in which champions of photographic “purity,” such as Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, get all the glory, while devotees of manipulation, including Henry Peach Robinson, Edward Steichen, and John Heartfield, are treated as conspicuous anomalies. Among the techniques discussed on these pages—abundantly illustrated with works from an international array of public and private collections—are multiple exposure, combination printing, photomontage, composite portraiture, over-painting, hand coloring, and retouching. The resulting images are as diverse in style and motivation as they are in technique. Taking her argument beyond fine art into the realms of politics, journalism, fashion, entertainment, and advertising, Fineman demonstrates that the old adage “the camera does not lie” is one of photography’s great fictions.
By tracing the history of manipulated photography from the earliest days of the medium to the release of Photoshop 1.0 in 1990, Mia Fineman offers a corrective to the dominant narrative of photography’s development, in which champions of photographic “purity,” such as Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, get all the glory, while devotees of manipulation, including Henry Peach Robinson, Edward Steichen, and John Heartfield, are treated as conspicuous anomalies. Among the techniques discussed on these pages—abundantly illustrated with works from an international array of public and private collections—are multiple exposure, combination printing, photomontage, composite portraiture, over-painting, hand coloring, and retouching. The resulting images are as diverse in style and motivation as they are in technique. Taking her argument beyond fine art into the realms of politics, journalism, fashion, entertainment, and advertising, Fineman demonstrates that the old adage “the camera does not lie” is one of photography’s great fictions.
- GenresPhotographyNonfictionArt
280 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2012
3 people are currently reading
133 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 2, 2013
A thorough essay on the history of photo editing and retouching. I loved the examples Fineman chose and appreciate how she weaves the history together. It's a great coffee table book and one that I hope to study for inspiration. I was quite shocked to learn how deep the history of photo retouching goes, to the very invention of the camera. So glad this book now exists.
September 3, 2013
Bought this 'cuz I missed the exhibit @ the Met. Seeing the photos hanging on a wall probably would have been better.
July 23, 2022
This was really cool! If you're into photography history, or altering photographs, check it out!
July 8, 2013
My review from Amazon: When I saw a write-up on the exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for which this book serves as catalog, I immediately ordered the book sight-unseen. Smart move. This is another in a long series of outstanding books on photographic history associated with Yale University Press (here, as distributor), as usual beautifully printed and bound using high-quality materials.
The text here is outstanding, laying out a history of photographic manipulations from the 1840s through the late twentieth century. Done for exaggeration, distortion, or to yield an image "more true than truth", with techniques including hand-coloring, drawing on negatives, compositing, chromolitho and half-tone printing and others, this is probably the most exhaustive study of the subject. There are other books on specific kinds of images -- exaggeration postcards. for example, and surrealist photography -- but I know no others that cover the full range so effectively. The text is also clear and accessible, and there's a section at the end that discusses each cataloged image in more detail. There's also a very good glossary at the end. Several images are shown with their component images, or detail showing negative alterations, or multiple images using a repeated component (like a cloudy sky composited into a scenic view) in order to help understand the processes.
The photographs are beautifully reproduced at good size. Relatively few are at full-page, but since many were originally produced as smaller images (e.g., CDVs, postcards) that doesn't feel inappropriate. The cover alone would make it suitable for a coffee table; the contents would enthrall anyone who casually picked it up from there.
My one quibble would be that there are insufficient examples drawn from parts of the world outside the US and Europe. There is a single Japanese image with hand coloring and added rain, and unsurprisingly there are several Russian and Soviet images -- the latter notorious for political editing -- and a scattered few others. To name just one example, Mexican journalistic photography is well known for its manipulations, and there are other global traditions both artistic and journalistic that could have been drawn on more fully.
As noted in the text, Newhall's History of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day remains a widely read classic work in the history of photography, but is specifically slanted towards "straight" photography. This volume would make an excellent companion to that work, fleshing out the history significantly.
The text here is outstanding, laying out a history of photographic manipulations from the 1840s through the late twentieth century. Done for exaggeration, distortion, or to yield an image "more true than truth", with techniques including hand-coloring, drawing on negatives, compositing, chromolitho and half-tone printing and others, this is probably the most exhaustive study of the subject. There are other books on specific kinds of images -- exaggeration postcards. for example, and surrealist photography -- but I know no others that cover the full range so effectively. The text is also clear and accessible, and there's a section at the end that discusses each cataloged image in more detail. There's also a very good glossary at the end. Several images are shown with their component images, or detail showing negative alterations, or multiple images using a repeated component (like a cloudy sky composited into a scenic view) in order to help understand the processes.
The photographs are beautifully reproduced at good size. Relatively few are at full-page, but since many were originally produced as smaller images (e.g., CDVs, postcards) that doesn't feel inappropriate. The cover alone would make it suitable for a coffee table; the contents would enthrall anyone who casually picked it up from there.
My one quibble would be that there are insufficient examples drawn from parts of the world outside the US and Europe. There is a single Japanese image with hand coloring and added rain, and unsurprisingly there are several Russian and Soviet images -- the latter notorious for political editing -- and a scattered few others. To name just one example, Mexican journalistic photography is well known for its manipulations, and there are other global traditions both artistic and journalistic that could have been drawn on more fully.
As noted in the text, Newhall's History of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day remains a widely read classic work in the history of photography, but is specifically slanted towards "straight" photography. This volume would make an excellent companion to that work, fleshing out the history significantly.
July 1, 2013
"While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph." — Lewis Hine
This gorgeous exhibition book from the Metropolitan Museum of Art reminds us that many of the image manipulation techniques we lump together as "Photoshopping" actually started long before the digital revolution, and in some instances go all the way back to the origins of photography. Layering or blending multiple exposures, retouching to idealize a subject's features, painting over scenes, adding or removing people from an image, creating realistic but impossible illusions -- all of this has been around a long, long time, and Mia Fineman's text is immensely helpful in understanding manipulation's proper context and place in the history of the medium.
Fineman explores the ways in which manipulation has been used to adjust for the limitations of camera technology, in the service of commerce, as political propaganda, as a commentary on art itself, or simply for amusement. Throughout that history, there has been a tension between the public expectation that a photograph must represent reality, and the hidden truth that no photograph, even a non-manipulated one, is ever truly objective. And while the pendulum swings between movements for "straight" photography and those promoting unfettered creativity, the fundamental nature of the camera is revealed: for if it is a reproducer of reality, it is an imperfect one, and the mind which operates it is always interpreting that reality. The creation of any image begins long before the shutter is opened, and often continues long after it is closed.
This gorgeous exhibition book from the Metropolitan Museum of Art reminds us that many of the image manipulation techniques we lump together as "Photoshopping" actually started long before the digital revolution, and in some instances go all the way back to the origins of photography. Layering or blending multiple exposures, retouching to idealize a subject's features, painting over scenes, adding or removing people from an image, creating realistic but impossible illusions -- all of this has been around a long, long time, and Mia Fineman's text is immensely helpful in understanding manipulation's proper context and place in the history of the medium.
Fineman explores the ways in which manipulation has been used to adjust for the limitations of camera technology, in the service of commerce, as political propaganda, as a commentary on art itself, or simply for amusement. Throughout that history, there has been a tension between the public expectation that a photograph must represent reality, and the hidden truth that no photograph, even a non-manipulated one, is ever truly objective. And while the pendulum swings between movements for "straight" photography and those promoting unfettered creativity, the fundamental nature of the camera is revealed: for if it is a reproducer of reality, it is an imperfect one, and the mind which operates it is always interpreting that reality. The creation of any image begins long before the shutter is opened, and often continues long after it is closed.
June 12, 2013
"It succeeds most in those moments that expose glimpses of the working process, uncovering a meeting place between human longing and technology, the desire to fix memory and the impulse (along with the means) to manipulate it."
--Anthony Lepore on "Faking it: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop" from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Read the full review here:
http://theartbookreview.org/2013/03/1...
--Anthony Lepore on "Faking it: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop" from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Read the full review here:
http://theartbookreview.org/2013/03/1...
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews