Manipulating Photos in a Pre-digital World

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec as Artist and Model by Maurice Guibert, ca. 1890. The duplex, orpolypose, picture was a popular trope that lent itself to endless comic variations and imaginative one-upmanship. The motif also appealed to artists, who occasionally created playful duplications ofthemselves. The French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who was also an avid amateur photographer,collaborated with his friend Maurice Guibert on this double portrait in which he plays the roles of bothartist and model, each regarding the other with cool irony. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museumof Art)

Soft Landing by Oliver Wasow, 1987. The stock-in-trade of supermarket tabloids, images of UFOs testthe relationship between photography and belief. In Soft Landing, as in his many other images ofmysteriously floating disks and orbs, Wasow courts doubt by distorting found images, running themthrough a battery of processes, including photocopying, drawing, and superimposition. The resultingphotographs play with the human propensity to invest form with meaning, offering just enough detail tospur the imagination. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Io + gatto by Wanda Wulz, 1932. Wulz, a portrait photographer loosely associated with the ItalianFuturist movement, created this striking composite by printing two negatives one of her face, the other ofthe family cat on a single sheet of photographic paper, evoking by technical means the seamlessconflation of identities that occurs so effortlessly in the world of dreams. (Photo courtesy of TheMetropolitan Museum of Art)

Study for Holiday in the Wood by Henry Peach Robinson, 1860. After the controversy stirred up by hisdepiction of a dying girl in Fading Away, Robinson chose a more anodyne rural scenario for his nextmajor composition, A Holiday in the Wood. Over the course of two sunny days in April 1860, he exposedsix separate negatives of models frolicking in his backyard studio. While waiting for another sunny day onwhich to photograph the woods a few miles away it was an exceptionally rainy year he made this trialprint, on which he painted the wooded background by hand to help him envision the completedcomposition. The close correspondence between the study and the final image is evidence of Robinsonsprecise preconception of his pictures. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Leap into the Void by Yves Klein, 1960. As in his carefully choreographed paintings in which he usednude female models dipped in blue paint as paintbrushes, Klein's photomontage paradoxically creates theimpression of freedom and abandon through a highly contrived process. In October 1960, Klein hired thephotographers Harry Shunk and Jean Kender to make a series of pictures re-creating a jump from asecond-floor window that the artist claimed to have executed earlier in the year. This second leap wasmade from a rooftop in the Paris suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses. On the street below, a group of theartists friends from held a tarpaulin to catch him as he fell. Two negatives one showing Klein leaping,the other the surrounding scene (without the tarp) were then printed together to create a seamlessdocumentary photograph. To complete the illusion that he was capable of flight, Klein distributed a fakebroadsheet at Parisian newsstands commemorating the event. It was in this mass-produced form that theartist's seminal gesture was communicated to the public and also notably to the Vienna Actionists. (Photocourtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Room with Eye by Maurice Tabard, 1930. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Red Square, Moscow, Russia by F. Daziaro, ca. 1870. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum ofArt)

Fresko Shutter, Same Person 4 Times by Unknown, American, ca. 1890. (Photo courtesy of TheMetropolitan Museum of Art)

Man on Rooftop with Eleven Men in Formation on His Shoulders by Unknown, American, ca. 1930.(Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Scene of Murder and Decapitation by Unknown, French, ca. 1870. One can only guess at the strangepsychosexual narrative that lay behind the making of this image and others in a private album that featureda small cast of characters repeatedly bound, beheaded, or burned at the stake, sometimes at the hands oftheir own doppelgangers. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

A Car Load of Texas Corn by George B. Cornish, ca. 1910. (Photo courtesy of The MetropolitanMuseum of Art)

The Sleepwalker by George Platt Lynes, 1935. Lynes composed this picture from two negatives. Theseams between them were airbrushed out so that his surprising anatomical conjunction would have theperfect aplomb of dream imagery. Alfred Barr's Museum of Modern Art exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada,and Surrealism (1936) included The Sleepwalker, probably a copyprint made by Lynes from this original.(Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

A Load of Fancy Poultry by William H. Martin, 1909. The tall-tale postcard was a uniquely Americangenre that flourished in the Midwest between about 1908 and 1915. The earliest master of the genre wasWilliam H. Dad Martin, a studio photographer in Kansas who established a successful sideline craftingphotomontages of outlandish agricultural abundance. Intimately familiar with the tribulations ofMidwestern farmers, including a fierce drought that parched the land for most of the 1890s, Martinlampooned the inflated promises of fertile soil, abundant rain, and hardy livestock that land companiesused to lure settlers westward. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

A Pair of Hungry Pike by Unknown, Canadian Post Card Company, 1911. (Photo courtesy of TheMetropolitan Museum of Art)

Man Daydreaming about Love by Unknown, 1910s. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum ofArt)

Fingers of Fate The Tightening Grip by Unknown, ca. 1916. During World War I, European postcardpublishers used photomontage to fan the flames of patriotism on both sides of the conflict. A postcardissued in Munich in 1914 shows a towering German infantryman pounding together the heads of threesoldiers of the Triple Entente France, England, and Russia in what the caption calls a powerfulcollision. A few years later, an English publisher countered with a card on which a giant hand, its wristand fingernails adorned with official portraits of the Allied leaders, crushes Germanys Kaiser WilhelmII in a tightening grip. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Dirigible Docked on Empire State Building, New York by Unknown, American, 1930. In 1930International News Photos transmitted over the wires this photograph of the U.S. Navy dirigible LosAngeles docked at a mooring mast atop the Empire State Building. In fact, no airship ever docked there,and the notion of the mast itself was a publicity stunt perpetrated by the buildings backers. In late 1929Alfred E. Smith, the leader of a group of investors erecting the Empire State Building, announced that theywould be increasing the buildings height by two hundred feet, making it slightly taller than its rival, theChrysler Building. The towers extension was to serve as a mooring mast for zeppelins from which wearyEuropean travelers would be able to disembark via a gangplank into a private elevator that would whiskthem to street level in just seven minutes. Ultimately, the unceasing gusty winds at the towers pinnaclemade the plan impossible to execute, but the mast remained, allowing the Empire State Building to claimthe title of worlds tallest skyscraper. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Untitled by Jerry N. Uelsmann, 1976. Uelsmann revived the technique of combination printingpioneered by such Victorian art photographers as Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson inthe early 1960s, when darkroom manipulation was denigrated by many proponents of straight photographyas a flagrant violation of photographic purity. His pictures, which he creates in a darkroom equipped withseven enlargers, are filled with mind-bending paradoxes, oblique symbolism, and bizarre contrasts ofscale. Uelsmanns work is now considered an important precursor to the seamless compositing widelyassociated with digital photography and Photoshop. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Ein krftiger Zusammenstoss by Unknown; published by E. A. Schwerdtfeger & Co, Berlin, 1914.(Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Man Serving Head on a Platter by William Robert Bowles, ca. 1900. (Photo courtesy of TheMetropolitan Museum of Art)

Woman Riding Moth by Unknown, American, ca. 1950. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museumof Art)

Distortograph: William Hale Big Bill Thompson, Mayor of Chicago by Herbert George Ponting,1927. Best known for his dramatic photographs of the South Pole, Ponting was also an inveterate tinkerer.In 1927 he patented a lens attachment he dubbed the variable controllable distortograph, describing itas a revolutionary optical system for photographing in caricature or distortion. With his patentapplication, he submitted these caricatures of the flamboyantly corrupt mayor of Chicago William HaleBig Bill Thompson, known for his protection of the gangster Al Capone and for colorful campaignstunts, such as staging a mayoral debate with two live rats as his opponents. (Photo courtesy of TheMetropolitan Museum of Art)

Bruno Richard Hauptmann in Electric Chair by John Wolters, 1936. In spite of the universal ban oncameras in American death chambers, news editors have long recognized the publics hunger foreyewitness images of high-profile executions. When Bruno Richard Hauptmann was due to be executedfor the kidnapping and murder of the young son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the InternationalNews Photos agency commissioned an artist to craft a photographic composite of the condemned manbeing strapped into the electric chair by two prison guards. The grisly image was created by staging thescene with actors then pasting headshots of Hauptmann and his executioners onto their bodies. (Photocourtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Crazy Camera: Secrets of Photomontage by Claude A. Bromley, 1941. (Photo courtesy of TheMetropolitan Museum of Art)

The Corporal is Leading Germany into a Catastrophe by Alexander Zhitomirsky, 1941. Working underthe auspices of the Soviet propaganda ministry, Zhitomirsky produced posters and leaflets that weredropped from Soviet fighter planes as part of a campaign to demoralize German soldiers during WorldWar II. Here, Germanys Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck (18151898), comes back to life in apainted portrait to point an accusing finger at the diminutive Fhrer (who never rose above the rank ofcorporal during his World War I army service), casting doubt on Hitlers credentials as a military leader.(Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Man Drinking with the Moon by Unknown, 1910s. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Woman with Umbrella in Rain by Raimund von Stillfried. Artist: Kusakabe Kimbei (Japanese, 18411934), 1870s. Commercial photography studios in Meiji-era Japan were renowned for the subtlety andrefinement of their coloring techniques. This hand-tinted image of a young woman caught in a heavyrainstorm achieved its naturalistic effect by knitting together multiple strands of artifice: the greenery inthe foreground was a studio prop; the flaps of the kimono were suspended by thin wires to create theimpression of a strong wind; and long, diagonal marks were made on the negative to suggest streaks ofrain. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Group of Thirteen Decapitated Soldiers by Unknown, ca. 1910. (Photo courtesy of The MetropolitanMuseum of Art)

Un Coup de Pompe, S.V.P. by Unknown, French, 1899. Around the turn of the twentieth century,decapitation was a hugely popular theme among photographers, stage magicians, and early filmmakerssuch as Georges Mlis. This photograph of a bearded gentleman tenderly inflating an enlarged duplicateof his own head with a bicycle pump graced the cover of the amateur photography magazine Photo Ple-Mle in 1903. Apparently, balloon heads were in the air in Belle poque Paris. Two years earlier,Mlis had produced a short film, Lhomme la tte de caoutchouc (The Man with the Rubber Head,1901), in which a scientist inflates a replica of his own head with a bellows. (Photo courtesy of TheMetropolitan Museum of Art)

Same Man Five Times in Judge Costume by Unknown, French, 1880s. Photographs were only subject tolegal deposit arrangements in the Bibliothque Nationale de France from 1925 onwards. However,photographers voluntarily deposited their works in the 19th century. Per an email from April 25, 2012from the department of photographs at the BNF, this work is of unknown provenance, and it does not haveany record of previous exhibitions. They note, that unlike museums, they do not keep a file about eachobject in their collection. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Reality of Our Plan is Active People by Mikhail Rozulevich, 1933. Razulevich initially producedthis photomontage in 1932 to decorate Leningrads Uritsky Square (now Saint Petersburgs PalaceSquare) for the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution. The artist combined more than threehundred images from the state archives into an enormous, seamless whole, about twenty-three yards long.The industrial landscape in the background was a composite of several images of the major constructionprojects undertaken as part of Stalins first Five-Year Plan (192832). Smaller copies of the photomuralwere installed in train stations throughout the city. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

New York Nightmare: Air-burst Atomic Bombs Make Cities in the Northeast Obsolete... by JohnCarlton, 1949. The sheer impossibility of photographing the future did not stop picture editors fromfabricating speculative representations of things to come. In the decades following the detonation ofLittle Boy at Hiroshima, Japan, the eras technological optimism was shadowed by a profound fear ofnuclear devastation. This photo illustration from the archives of Londons Daily Herald gives strikingvisual form to the pervasive doomsday anxiety of the atomic age. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan

Museum of Art)

Unidentified Woman Seated with a Female Spirit by William Mumler, 1862-75. In the early 1860sMumler became the first producer and marketer of spirit photographs, portraits in which hazy figures,presumed to be the spirits of the deceased, loom behind or alongside living sitters. He quickly garneredthe support of the burgeoning Spiritualist movement, which held that the human spirit exists beyond thebody and that the dead can and do communicate with the living. Mumler first discovered his callingwhile working as a jewelry engraver in Boston, but his career there was cut short when a ghost that hadappeared in two of his photographs was discovered to be a local resident who was still very much alive.In 1868 he opened a studio in New York City but was arrested the following year on charges of fraud andlarceny. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Sueo No. 1: Articulos elctricos para el hogar by Grete Stern, ca. 1950. In 1948 the Argentinewomens magazine Idilio introduced a weekly column called Psychoanalysis Will Help You, whichinvited readers to submit their dreams for analysis. Each week, one dream was illustrated with aphotomontage by Stern, a Bauhaus-trained photographer and graphic designer who fled Berlin for BuenosAires when the Nazis came to power. Over three years, Stern created 140 photomontages for themagazine, translating the unconscious fears and desires of its predominantly female readership intoclever, compelling images. Here, a masculine hand swoops in to turn on a lamp whose base is a tiny,elegantly dressed woman. Rarely has female objectification been so erotically and electrically charged.(Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Lonely Metropolitan by Herbert Bayer, 1932. A Bauhaus-trained graphic designer who immigrated toNew York City in 1938, Bayer was known for his innovative work in advertising and book publishing.Although never formally connected with Surrealism, he was fascinated by dream imagery and embracedphotomontage as a means of visualizing the psychological realities of modernity. In 1931 he began aseries of photomontages illustrating his own dreams, which included this emblematic image in which theartists eyes stare from the palms of his hands, cut off at the wrists and floating mysteriously in thecourtyard of a Berlin apartment block. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Lenin and Stalin in Gorky, 1922 by Unknown, Russian, 1949. In this widely reproduced image, JosephStalin and Vladimir Ilich Lenin the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and founder of the U.S.S.R. appear to share a friendly moment together outdoors at Gorki, Lenins estate just south of Moscow.Although Stalin did visit Lenin there frequently, the photograph has been heavily reworked: retoucherssmoothed Stalins pockmarked complexion, lengthened his shriveled left arm, and increased his stature sothat Lenin seems to recede benignly beside his trusted heir apparent. The reality was quite different: in aletter dictated around the time the picture was taken, Lenin described Stalin as intolerably rude andcapricious and recommended that he be removed from his position as the Communist Partys secretarygeneral. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Human Relations by William Mortensen, 1932. Mortensen began his career as a Hollywood studiophotographer, turning out glamour portraits of stars such as Clara Bow and Jean Harlow. In the early1930s he established a photography school in Laguna Beach, where he refined and promoted his ownaesthetican eccentric blend of late Pictorialism, Surrealism, and Hollywood kitsch. Restlesslyinventive in the darkroom, he employed a wide variety of techniques, including combination printing,heavy retouching, and physical and chemical abrasion of the negative. At times, his use of texturedprinting screens gave his photographs the appearance of etchings or lithographs, as in this audaciouslygrotesque picture, which was prompted, according the artist, by an overcharged long-distance telephonebill. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Woman in Champagne Glass by Howard S. Redell, ca. 1930. Redell, a photographer and sales managerat Underwood and Underwood Studios, harnessed the power of sex appeal in this photomontage of anattractive young woman enjoying a cigarette while bathing in a glass of champagne a pictorial fantasy ofluxury and indulgence that was probably created as a tobacco advertisement. (Photo courtesy of TheMetropolitan Museum of Art)

Times Square, New York by Weegee, 195259. Famous for his gritty tabloid crime photographs,Weegee devoted the last twenty years of his life to what he called his creative work. He experimentedprolifically with distorting lenses and comparable darkroom techniques, producing photo caricatures ofpoliticians and Hollywood celebrities, novel variations on the man-in-the-bottle motif, and uncannydoublings and reflections, such as this striking image, which he described as Times Square under 10 feetof water on a sunny afternoon. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum