The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Echeveria Gibbiflora var. Melia Ilica

Art Object

Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

Can you spot which photos are fake? Can you imagine why they were altered? Put your eyes to the test. Download Faking It for the iPad, available in the App Store.

Digital cameras and image-editing software have made photo manipulation easier than ever, but photographers have been doctoring images since the medium was invented. The false "realities" in altered photographs can be either surprising and eye-catching or truly deceptive and misleading.

Faking It is a quiz that asks players to spot which photos are fake and figure out why they were altered. Through fifteen sets of questions accompanied by more than two dozen remarkable images, the Faking It app challenges misconceptions about the history of photo manipulation.

Images in the app range from a heroic portrait of Ulysses S. Grant to a playful portrait of Salvador Dalí, and from New York's glamorous Empire State Building to Oregon's sublime Cape Horn.

The app complements the exhibition Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop (on view October 11, 2012–January 27, 2013).

Music: "Staccato" by Alastair Cameron, CC BY 3.0
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Alastair_Cameron

Video/Audio (1)

James Nares: Street
(00:02:17) 18091 views

Echeveria Gibbiflora var. Melia Ilica

Albert Renger-Patzsch (German, Wurzburg 1897–1966 Wamel)

Date:: ca. 1924
Medium:: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions:: 23.0 x 17.1 cm (9 1/16 x 6 3/4 in.)
Classification:: Photographs
Credit Line:: Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987
Accession Number:: 1987.1100.207

This artwork is not on display

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Inscription: Photographer's stamp on print, verso, UC: "Renger-Patzsch D.W.B. // Fotografie // Bad Harzburg"; reproduction stamp on print, verso, UC to UR [in box]: "Jede Reproduktion // verboten"; inscribed in pencil on print, verso, C: "Echeveria gibbiflora // var. melia ilica [?] // Blütenzweig"; inscribed in pencil on print, verso, LL: "33J"
Provenance

[Prakapas Gallery to Waddell, June 1, 1982]; John C. Waddell
See also
Who
Albert Renger-Patzsch (17)
What
Photographs (32,550)

Gelatin silver prints (8,690)
Where
Europe (148,586)

Germany (15,865)
When
A.D. 1900-present (77,516)
In the Museum
Photographs (29,384)
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Central Europe (Austria, Germany, and Switzerland), 1900 A.D.–present

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Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

Echeveria Gibbiflora var. Melia Ilica

Albert Renger-Patzsch (German, Wurzburg 1897–1966 Wamel)

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Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

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Echeveria Gibbiflora var. Melia Ilica

Albert Renger-Patzsch (German, Wurzburg 1897–1966 Wamel)

Met Media

Met Kids

Met Store