The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Faking It Symposium: Social Documentary and Pictorial Manipulation

The symposium "Truth, Lies, and Photographs" was presented in conjunction with the exhibition Faking It: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop, on view October 11, 2012, through January 27, 2013. In this talk, Miles D. Orvell, Professor of English and American Studies, Temple University, discusses parallels between H. P. Robinson, a pictorial photographer, and W. Eugene Smith, a social documentary photographer. Both photographers, despite working in different genres of photography, manipulated the images while photographing them, sometimes asking participants to pose or repeat activities over and over again.

Part Three of Seven

Recorded November 2, 2012

The exhibition is made possible by Adobe.
This program is made possible by Joyce Frank Menschel.

Video/Audio (1)

James Nares: Street
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Obsession

William Mortensen (American, 1897–1965)

Date:: ca. 1930
Medium:: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions:: Image: 18.4 x 14.5 cm (7 1/4 x 5 11/16 in.) Frame: 43.2 x 35.6 cm (17 x 14 in.)
Classification:: Photographs
Credit Line:: The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1975
Accession Number:: 1975.623.1