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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Montage

Maurice Tabard (French, Lyons 1897–1984 Nice)

Date:: 1929
Medium:: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions:: 28.8 x 22.8 cm (11 5/16 x 9 in.)
Classification:: Photographs
Credit Line:: Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987
Accession Number:: 1987.1100.84

This artwork is not on display

Description

The form of this montage is very close to the two-dimensional collages of the Russian constructivists. Like them, Tabard's picture seems to float in an immeasurable cosmic space, composed of austere planes and representations of the actual world, which are arranged in contradictory perspectives.
Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Inscription: Stamped on original mount in ink, verso: "PHOTO [underlined and sideways]", "Maurice // TABARD // PARIS"; stamped on original mount in blue ink, verso: "29-15 [underlined and boxed in ink]"; inscribed in ink on original mount, verso: "Montager"; stamped in blue ink on original mount, verso [upside down]: "Maurice // tabard // 38 rue du vieux // pont de sèvres // boulogne seine";
Provenance

[Sander Gallery to Waddell, June 16, 1982]; John C. Waddell
See also
Who
Maurice Tabard (11)
What
Photographs (32,621)

Gelatin silver prints (8,694)
Where
Europe (150,013)

France (49,321)
When
A.D. 1900-present (79,803)
In the Museum
Photographs (29,450)
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Photography and Surrealism

France, 1900 A.D.–present
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Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

Montage

Maurice Tabard (French, Lyons 1897–1984 Nice)

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Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

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Montage

Maurice Tabard (French, Lyons 1897–1984 Nice)

Met Media

Met Kids

Met Store