Photography Has Been Fooling Us Since 1840
Photography was introduced to the world in the early 19th century. Almost immediately, it stopped being just a tool for documentation, and became a playground.
Collision between a car and a steamroller (1915), Alfred Stanley Johnson JrCourtesy of the Rijksmuseum
Long before Photoshop. Long before AI image generators. Long before the phrase “deepfake” existed.
People were already manipulating photographs.
The idea that images can be bent, staged, or fabricated is not a modern corruption of photography. It is part of its origin story.
From the earliest glass plates and chemical baths, artists and pranksters alike were experimenting with what a photograph could do, not just what it could record.
Photomontage of a man pushing a wheelbarrow containing a head (c 1900–1910), anonymousCourtesy of the Rijksmuseum
The First Fakes
In 1917, two young cousins created one of the most famous photographic hoaxes in history. The images known as the Cottingley Fairies showed delicate winged creatures dancing in an English garden.
Cottingley Fairies, 1917.
They were charming. They were convincing.
They were made with paper cutouts and careful staging.
Even Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, believed the images might be genuine. The photographs circulated widely and became part of a larger cultural fascination with spiritualism and the unseen.
Decapitation (c 1880–1900), FM HotchkissCourtesy of the Rijksmuseum
What feels shocking now was simply ingenuity then. A borrowed camera, some illustrated fairies, and a bit of imagination were enough to bend reality.
Manipulation Is as Old as the Medium
As early as 1840, photographers were staging elaborate visual statements. Hippolyte Bayard created “Self Portrait as a Drowned Man,” a theatrical image of himself posed as a corpse. It was not meant to deceive for profit. It was commentary. Performance. Protest. A declaration about recognition and authorship in a rapidly evolving field.
Man startled by his own reflection (c 1870–1880), Leonard de KoninghCourtesy of the Rijksmuseum
Elsewhere, so-called spirit photographers layered exposures to produce ghostly figures hovering behind the living. Others combined negatives to place people together who had never shared the same space.
These were not glitches. They were experiments.
Daydream (c 1870–1890), anonymousCourtesy of the Rijksmuseum
From the very beginning, photography existed somewhere between truth and theater.
The Darkroom Was the First Photoshop
For over 180 years, artists have been dodging, burning, cutting, pasting, masking, and compositing. Entire worlds were assembled in trays of chemicals under red light. Skies were replaced. Figures were inserted. Histories were rewritten.
What has changed in 2026 is not the human impulse to manipulate images. What has changed is speed and scale.
Advertisement for the Transfield Sisters (c 1904-1918), anonymousCourtesy of the Rijksmuseum
Today, algorithms can fabricate entire realities in seconds. But the instinct behind it, the curiosity to stretch what is visible, has always been there.
Car floating above Mulberry Bend Park, New York (1908), Theodor EismannCourtesy of the Rijksmuseum
Photography has never been purely objective. It has always involved choice. Framing. Cropping. Staging. Interpretation.
And sometimes, playful deception.
Taking our Geese to market (1909), Martin Post Card CompanyCourtesy of the Rijksmuseum
A Creative Tradition, Not a Modern Problem
It is tempting to think of manipulated imagery as a symptom of our era. In truth, it is a creative tradition that runs back to the birth of the medium itself.
Humans have been bending photographs for nearly two centuries. Not only to deceive, but to explore, to critique, to amuse, and to imagine.
The tools evolve.
The impulse remains.
Like really old photos? Check out the first known photograph ever taken.
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