The camera never lies, so we’ve been altering photographs to
suit our needs since the invention of photography itself. Is it
a painting or a photograph? It is a harbor. Ships sit on the
beach at low tide. The clouds are puffy and white in the sky. A
city can be seen in the background. Lovely cliffs rise up
behind. Édouard Baldus, a Frenchman, created the image in 1855.
It is a photograph, but the clouds have painted on to the print.
The image comes to us from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the
way of an exhibit titled "Faking It: Manipulated Photography
Before Photoshop," on view through January 27th, 2013. The
exhibit contains photographs that have been doctored and
manipulated from the 1840s all the way up through the 1990s. The
inspiration for the show is explained to us thusly: Over the
past two decades, digital technology has made us all more keenly
aware of the malleability of the photographic image, and many
lament a loss of faith in the testimony of the camera. What we
have gained, however, is a fr