Early Photographic Manipulation

Although the developments of digital imaging have brought our conception of photographic truth into question, it should be understood that even traditional photographers have been playing with the idea of photographic truth since the invention of photography in the early 1800s. In essence, digital manipulation is not really that different from darkroom manipulation. According to the website for the book, A History of Photography, by Robert Leggat, combination printing was developed as early as 1840 by the photographer Henry Peach Robinson. Combination printing refers to a technique in which a single cohesive photograph is made from combining more than one negative or print. According to Leggat, Robinson also introduced this combination printing technique to fellow photographers, including Oscar Rejlander, who enhanced the technique even further. One of Henry Peach Robinson's most famous photos, "Fading Away," from 1858, is a combination of five negatives. The photo (which can be seen above) depicts a young girl on her death bed, suffering from tuberculosis, surrounded by her grieving family members. Although not visible in this reproduction, the original photograph contains what Leggat refers to as "joins," subtle lines where the separate images meet. Even though these "joins" were evidence of manipulation, the viewing public was virtually oblivious to Robinson's modifications, believing the photograph to be a true representation. When in 1860 Robinson revealed his methods at a meeting of the Photographic Society of Scotland, he was met with protest, even anger from those who felt they had been deceived by his darkroom trickery. However, Robinson's intention was not to deceive his audience because he never claimed that "Fading Away," was a truthful representation of reality. Essentially, Robinson did not believe that photography was a medium of objective truth, in fact he saw photography as another means of altering reality to create a work of art. In his major literary work of 1867 entitled, "Pictorial Effect in Photography," Robinson wrote, "Any dodge, trick and conjuration of any kind is open to the photographer's use.... It is his imperative duty to avoid the mean, the base and the ugly, and to aim to elevate his subject.... and to correct the unpicturesque....A great deal can be done and very beautiful pictures made, by a mixture of the real and the artificial in a picture." Here we can see that, in a sense, Robinson saw himself as a photographic painter. Thus, through the work of Henry Peach Robinson and his development of combination printing, we can see that over a hundred years before before digital images were manipulated, photographs were not always telling the truth.