Manipulated Photography

Photographs altered after the shutter closes, through combination printing, retouching, darkroom tricks or digital editing.

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About

Photographs have been altered almost since the medium began. In the 1850s Henry Peach Robinson printed several negatives onto one sheet to build scenes no single exposure could hold, as in Fading Away (1858), and portrait studios routinely retouched negatives with pencil and knife. Soviet censors later painted purged officials out of group pictures, a reminder that editing can erase as well as invent.

Digital software, widely available from the early 1990s, made seamless change routine. Andreas Gursky removed buildings from the far bank of the river in Rhein II (1999), leaving a pared-down band of water, grass and sky. Jeff Wall assembled A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) (1993) from many separate shots taken over months. Other artists leave the intervention visible: scratched emulsion, cut and rejoined prints, hues pushed past the plausible. The real question is rarely whether an image was changed, but how far, and why.