The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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

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James Nares: Street
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Guitare et Tennis

Maurice Tabard (French, Lyons 1897–1984 Nice)

Date:: 1929, printed 1932
Medium:: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions:: 17.4 x 22.9 cm (6 7/8 x 9 in.)
Classification:: Photographs
Credit Line:: Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987
Accession Number:: 1987.1100.135

This artwork is not on display

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Inscription: Signed and dated in pencil on print, recto LR: "M. TABARD 32"; signed and dated in pencil on mount, recto LR: "Tabard 29"; photographer's stamp on mount, verso C: "PHOTO [underlined, sideways] // Maurice // Tabard // Paris"; inscribed in ink on mount, verso C: "Guitare et Tennis [in quotation marks]"; stamped on mount, verso C, in box drawn in ink: "-29-21"; inscribed in pencil on mount, verso LC: "46"
Provenance

(Sale, Sotheby's, New York, November 9, 1983, Lot #272, to Waddell); John C. Waddell
Notes

According to JCW, this print came from the Marlboro Gallery sale of Tabard's estate (via Paul Katz). Variants see: Maurice Tabard, Paris: Contrejour, 1987, p.42.
See also
Who
Maurice Tabard (11)
What
Photographs (32,550)

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

France (52,276)
When
A.D. 1900-present (77,516)
In the Museum
Photographs (29,384)
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Photography and Surrealism

France, 1900 A.D.–present

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Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

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Maurice Tabard (French, Lyons 1897–1984 Nice)

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Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

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Guitare et Tennis

Maurice Tabard (French, Lyons 1897–1984 Nice)

Met Media

Met Kids

Met Store