Digital technology makes it easy for photojournalists to alter and change photographs. In a 2006 image distributed by Reuters, a photographer copied and darkened smoke to exaggerate bombing damage in Beirut (images). During the early days of the Iraq invasion, the Los Angeles Times published a photo that combined two photographs taken seconds apart to improve composition (images).
Faking and staging photos are nothing new. In 1936, Farm Security Administration photographer Arthur Rothstein moved and photographed a bleached steer skull at several locations in the Badlands to convey devastation during severe drought (photo above). Opponents of President Roosevelt’s New Deal criticized the image as government propaganda.
Retired South Dakota State University history professor John Miller and Jon Lauck, president of the Midwest History Association, visited with SDPB's Karl Gehrke about Arthur Rothstein's famous skull - interview below. (Transcript)
NOTE: The Bronx Documentary Center, Altered Images: 150 Years of Posed and Manipulated Documentary Photography exhibit has expired.
Learn about Dorthea Lange’s iconic image, “Migrant Mother” Photo Series at the Library of Congress, described in the interview above. More information at "Whose Migrant Mother Was This?"
THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS video described in the interview above is available below from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum of the National Archives and Records Administration. With powerful imagery, a moving score, and poetic narration, this pioneering New Deal-commissioned documentary, made by Pare Lorentz, explores the natural bounty of the American Great Plains and the land-use abuses that led to the ravages of the Dust Bowl.
Your students will learn about Farm Security Administration photographer Arthur Rothstein’s famous 1936 bleached steer skull and other staged or edited images. They will also use a photo editing program or other techniques to manipulate a photo to convey a given feeling or expression.