PhotoShop? Pfft. Try This Civil War Equivalent.
Here’s a photo from the Civil War. It’s entitled “General Grant at City Point”.
There’s only one problem: it’s fake. It’s the Civil War era equivalent of a modern-day Photoshopped image. The event “recorded” in the photo never happened.
Fox has an interesting story concerning the fake photo. It’s a short article, and IMO is well worth a few minutes of your time.
FWIW: it’s also IMO a better job of combining photos than that done by someone we all “know and love”. And based on its copyright date (1902), it was done over a century earlier.
Category: Historical, Who knows
Well, I’m impressed… sort of. I’m also wondering if anyone faked Rambrandt’s self-portrait. Oh, the betrayal! And how many of those blackwork Grecian urns with Hercules doing this and that are just stuff?!?
And FWIW, horses don’t have ankles. They have pasterns. So was the reporter faking it?!? Will this never end?
I did briefly see some article about a series of photographs of elderly women looking at their younger selves in a window, but that’s a nostalgic thing, and quite poignant.
Word has it that it was the handywork of a Samuel Nerbath and Houston Copafeel
…This is kinda cool, as I have an example of something like this myself. My great-great-grandfather served in one of the Household Regiments of Kaiser Wilhelm II in the late 1800s, and we have a cherished picture of him in his dress uniform. But when we had it digitally restored a few years ago, it turns out that it’s not actually a true photo of him – it’s a face shot that was superimposed on a pic of someone else. Still trying to figure out exactly what was going on there. 😀
Mike
The only logical answer is that your great great grandfather wa awarded the title of Honorary Household Regiments Member.
Fox got the headline wrong. Should say: Does this photo of Hiram Ulysses Grant look strange to you?
“Ulysses S. Grant” was as much a phony name as Bernath being a CPO.
I guess Bermaggot had relatives back then as well.
Green thumb, if I may, “Grant works balls”. 😀
I hope that whoever did that photoshopping was smart enough to ensure that his observation balloon had enough hot air to maintain flight.
Proves the old saying, “Everywhere you go, there they are.”
Cool story, Hondo. Still, although I’d be about the last person to beat up on the LOC photo archives, it seems to me the fact that the fake photo of Grant exists doesn’t explain why it was created in the first place. My own guess is that was probably used as an illustration for a circa 1902 print publication, a montage generated from what was essentially stock art.
Another interesting thing to consider is that it would have been very difficult to create the image at the time of the Civil War using the existing technology of wet glass plates. IIRC, there was also no way to half-tone a photo for a print run; printers were still restricted to using line engravings. By 1902, the photo technology had changed to film and enlargers which made darkroom magic much easier.
At the risk of a grumpy geezerism, it seems apparent that the current pervasive presence of phone cameras hasn’t led to all that much of an improvement in photography at least in the artsy-fartsy sense. We haven’t ended up with better photography; we’ve ended up with an avalanche of Kim Kardashian selfies.
The Library of Congress has a page devoted to this image:
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/mystery.html
It also has links to tons of other Civil War images. One can spend a lot of time looking at the images, the people, etc.
For similar old type photos, see:
https://picasaweb.google.com/103327769373726780629/MiscPics
Posted as found. (two photos in albumn)