Manipulated Photographs as Documents

            Kaplan and Mifflin state that “historians using photographic evidence must remember that photos are not a facsimile of total past scenes or events, but only partial reality.”[1] Photographs as documents are always effected by the context in which they are created and have multiple layers that should be investigated during the research process.  Each image reflects assumptions, ideas, and fears of the photographer and the viewer regardless of subject meaning it only has value while it is being interpreted. While in the case of history, the image would seem to project a historical truth because photographs are generally seen as impartial to the subject at hand, the opposite is often true.[2] Photographers bring their own bias and without extensive biographical information the meaning can become lost within the photograph itself. Interpretations are constantly changing to assign new information or value to previously captured images. Despite the unstable meaning of photographs, they are historical documents that reveal information about a time and place even if that information has been distorted or manipulated.[3]

            Manipulation of photography can happen at any part of the photographic process from taking the actual image through the arrangement and description done by a cultural institution. Dissection of images needs to happen in order for them to be used as historical documents that reveals the background of the image and the purposes for its creation. Without this context, the image loses meaning, but can also deceive the viewer into believing ideas that were not really true.[4] This is especially true for images that have emerged from totalitarian regimes where “photography served very well as a means of propaganda thanks to the presumably authenticity this medium was thought to be capable of conveying.”[5] Images became a useful tool to convince the masses of a new way of thinking because one did not have to be literate to understand their messages. Because photographs of this nature were meant to be thought provoking and public, they provide the historian with an ideal the regime was attempting to accomplish. Often these ideals were vastly different from the realities of life for many of its citizens, but it showed what the government wished to convey.[6]

Photograph of Stalin airbrushed
to remove wrinkles and scars
David King, The Commissar Vanishes, 99

            Manipulation of photography for use as propaganda occurred in the Soviet Union during the years of Stalin’s reign over the country. This primarily began to be done in order to create a cult of Stalinism that would justify the policies, such as the Great Terror that were destroying many people’s lives, and promote the Soviet government over Germany.[7] During the early years of Stalin’s reign, photo manipulation occurred in the form of simple airbrushing to remove scars remaining from when Stalin had contracted smallpox as a child. As soon as the Great Terror began the processes, however, evolved to erase those who were murdered, fell out of party favor, or died from the photographic record. Citizens would then be required to edit their own personal objects to remove the person’s image and information. If this did not occur, they risked being executed or sent to a gulag for being “anti-Soviet.”[8]

The painted over figure of a person can
be seen in the train car window
David King, The Commissar Vanishes, 50

    The Ministry of Falsification was responsible for editing and retouching photographs to either insert people back into the images or remove those who had fallen out of party favor. Most often this would take shape in cutting out the person’s image with a scalpel then painting over the area they had occupied to hide the edges, or pure airbrushing the person out of the image which resulted in less noticeable edges.[9] These instances has varying effectiveness depending on the attention to detail the editor put into the image. For example, the image shown here “a ghostly apparition—the result of the retoucher’s inept hand—is all that remains of the person who had been looking out of the carriage.”[10] Images with similar poor editing makes David King, the author of The Commissar Vanishes, question if it was done intentionally as a warning or sign that this could happen to anyone or a sign that a person had previously been in the photograph.[11]

The Four, Three, Two, One Photographs from David King, The Commissar Vanishes, 104-107

Cropping was another skilled way to remove former party members out of images. This can be seen as happening in the famous photograph of Stalin with Nikolai Antipov, Sergei Kirov, and Nikolai Shbernik. As time passed, each member of the photograph was cropped until only Stalin himself was left in an almost painted image.[12] By keeping himself as the last remaining true party member in this image, the dictator helped further his creation of socialist realism, in which images were altered or created to “transmit official ideology, promote the cult of Stalin, and forge Soviet citizenry.”[13] The mass dissemination of these images helped forge a collective image that everyone was able to recognize. In order to do this, the image had to build multiple truths around a particular symbol, Stalin, to promote the ideology of the state.[14] For historians, images like these must be examined and explored, which is easy to do as the progression of deletion of people from the image is clear. It can be used as a progressive timeline that illustrates the development of Soviet propaganda and political relationships.

It is also worth noting that in addition to Stalin having himself added into key moments in Soviet history, such as being incredibly close to Lenin during the October Revolution, sometimes people who had fallen out of favor returned to the images spread by the government. This happened on rare occasions when a party member survived their sentence in a gulag and was returned to public life.[15] Because many of the original images were not destroyed, but placed in the official archives of the Soviet Union along with all other written, film, or audio records of the individual, it was possible to return those who had been airbrushed, cut, or cropped out of images to their original place in the photograph. These items were placed in closed archives at a moment’s notice and could not be accessed by anyone but the archivists.[16] By keeping the original photographs, however, the Soviet Union has allowed for future historians to be able to track the progression of image manipulation by the Ministry of Falsification. This can show development in techniques or a general timeline of events for Stalin’s reign over the USSR.

Funeral of Kim Jong-il, New York Times

Photo manipulation is still occurring in images released to newspapers. When Kim Jong-Il died in 2011, North Korea released photographs of his funeral that had been doctored. Six men with cameras were removed and now was added to the image. It is not a major change, but it is significant that media was removed.  The reason for these changes is most likely for “totalitarian aesthetics,”[17] where everything seems to be in perfect order. During his lifetime the, Kim Jong-Il was photoshopped, like Stalin, to place him at events where he was not in attendance. One of the most notable photographs was of him with the North Korean army where a line painted on the wall behind the officers in the front row is not present around the leader.[18] These images are meant to convey the idea of North Korea that the country wants to show to the world, rather than what is true. Much like Stalin, the photographs represent an ideal that is important to record as long as the manipulations are clearly documented.

Kim Jong-Il with the Army, The Independent

As manipulation of photographs has been a common theme throughout history, it is important to ask questions about the truthfulness of photography as a medium. Even if the image is not doctored in any way the composition can be changed to exclude or include certain things, such as the photograph of Stalin having party officials in the four to one series above.[19] It is important in this scenario to contextualize the photograph within a series or culture that explains what is occurring in the photograph. Even if it has been doctored, the removal of people from or the addition of people to the image should be taken as evidence that manipulation had occurred. Photographs themselves have been used to provide evidence that a scene or event took place, but the concept of doctored images has normally been used to diminish credibility.[20] Through a greater understanding and including contextual information, manipulated photographs can be used to provide information about the way a particular country would like to be seen and, in the case of the Soviet Union, as a timeline of when certain party officials died or were imprisoned.

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[1] Elizabeth Kaplan and Jeffery Mifflin, “”Mind and Sight”: Visual Literacy and the Archivist,” Archival Issues 21 (1996): 85. 

[2] Michael Lesy. “Visual Literacy,” The Journal of American History 94 (2007): 143, 144.

[3] Martha A. Sandweiss. “Image and Artifact: The Photograph as Evidence in the Digital Age,” The Journal of American History 94 (2007): 202, 194.

[4] Kaplan, “”Mind and Sight,”” 10, 85

[5] Andru Chiorean. “Photography and Historical Study. Possible Interpretations.” Revista Arhivelor (2008): 245.

[6] Chirocean, “Photography and Historical Study,” 245.

[7] Susan Corbesero. “History, Myth, and Memory: A Biography of a Stalin Portrait,” Russian History 38 (2011): 59.

[8] David King. The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia. (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1997): 9.

[9] King, The Commissar Vanishes, 13.

[10] King, The Commissar Vanishes, 50.

[11] King, The Commissar Vanishes, 13.

[12] King, The Commissar Vanishes, 104-107.

[13]  Corbesero, “History, Myth, and Memory,” 62.

[14] Lesy, “Visual Literacy,” 144.

[15] King, The Commissar Vanishes, 17.

[16] King, The Commissar Vanishes, 12.

[17] J. David. Goodman and David Frust, “From North Korea, and Altered Procession,” The New York Times, December 28, 2011. http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/from-north-korea-an-altered-procession/

[18] Doug Bolton and Megan Townsend. “The Best Photoshopped Images—and the Stories Behind Them.” The Independent, August 21, 2015. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-best-photoshopped-images-and-the-stories-behind-them-10465812.html

[19] Claire O’Neill. “Fake It ‘Til You Make It: What Came Before Photoshop,” NPR, March 17, 2013. http://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2013/03/17/174405024/fake-it-til-you-make-it-what-came-before-photoshop

[20] Guy Baxter. “The Historical Photograph: Record, Information Source, Resource,” Art Libraries Journal 28 (2003): 4-12.

Bibliography 

Baxter, Guy. “The Historical Photograph: Record, Information Source, Resource,” Art Libraries 

Journal 28 (2003): 4-12.

Bolton, Doug and Megan Townsend. “The Best Photoshopped Images—and the Stories Behind Them.” The Independent, August 21, 2015. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-best-photoshopped-images-and-the-stories-behind-them-10465812.html

Chiorean, Andru. “Photography and Historical Study. Possible Interpretations.” Revista Arhivelor (2008): 242-256.

Corbesero, Susan. “History, Myth, and Memory: A Biography of a Stalin Portrait,” Russian History 38 (2011): 58-84.

Goodman, J. David and David Frust, “From North Korea, and Altered Procession,” The New York Times, December 28, 2011. http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/from-north-korea-an-altered-procession/

Kaplan, Elizabeth and Jeffery Mifflin, “”Mind and Sight”: Visual Literacy and the Archivist,” Archival Issues 21 (1996): 107-127.

King, David. The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1997.

Lesy, Michael. “Visual Literacy,” The Journal of American History 94 (2007): 143-153.

O’Neil, Claire. “Fake It ‘Til You Make It: What Came Before Photoshop,” NPR, March 17, 2013. http://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2013/03/17/174405024/fake-it-til-you-make-it-what-came-before-photoshop

Sandweiss, Martha A. “Image and Artifact: The Photograph as Evidence in the Digital Age,” The Journal of American History 94 (2007): 193-202.