Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

This engrossing volume coincides with a show at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrating pre-1990 photo alteration, and argues that its practitioners were every bit as imaginative as, and by necessity more resourceful than, today’s digital meddlers. A talented writer, Met assistant curator Fineman traces photo “fakery” to the dawn of the medium more than 150 years ago when artists took license for both aesthetic and commercial ends, whether by inserting clouds into clear skies or huckstering “spirit photographs” that featured ghosts hovering above portrait subjects. Are prints a neutral way of capturing “truth”? Or has the medium always been one of almost infinite plasticity through which reality can be contorted for profit, propaganda, or fun? Often, the answer is the latter. In a fine chapter on how photo alteration can serve political aims, we see pivotal figures artificially inserted next to, or erased from, the physical presence of Hitler, Stalin, and Chairman Mao. The colorful section on “Novelties and Amusements” includes a nude beauty air-surfing a gigantic moth, clone-happy painters patiently sitting for their own self-portraits, and elephantine livestock and produce. Each chapter, as well as the “Discussions of Individual Works,” yields pleasures and erudition, and overall, this finely curated collection is an unequivocal delight. 276 color and b&w illus. (Oct.)