Fairies, fakes and photos

DAVID HAMBLING looks back at the long history of fortean photographic deceptions

We live in the age of the deepfake AI image and misleading digital pictures. But the issue goes back much further; the rise and fall of iconic images has been a recurrent theme in Fortean Times’s first 50 years. Understanding how this keeps happening may help us recognise the pattern. The phrase “the camera never lies” was around in 1859, but even then photographers were using double exposures to produce fake ghosts. These were mainly created for entertainment, but sometimes tricksters tried to pass them off as genuine. The public soon became wise to the fact that images can be retouched or show things which are not really there, and the psychic images in Fort’s day were too similar to well-known illusions to be credible. However, experts learned to distinguish…

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Fortean Times (Digital) - 1 Issue, 450

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