The Hoax Photo Archive

About the
Hoax Photo Archive

Images are categorized by theme, technique of fakery, and time period. Click on a thumbnail for more details about each photo. Included in the database are photos that are "real," but which have been suspected of being fake, as well as images whose veracity remains undetermined.

Techniques of
Photo Fakery

There are six basic techniques of faking a photo:

1: Inserting details. This includes placing an element from one photo into another to create a composite image, reproducing a detail of the photo by cloning it, superimposing an image onto another, or drawing-in details.

2: Deleting details. This is usually done by extending background elements over the unwanted detail. Or one can crop out the unwanted detail.

3: Manipulating elements within the photo. For instance, adjusting the color, resizing details, or rotating or moving details.

4: falsifying the caption.

5: Staging the scene. This is considered fakery particularly in photojournalism. Varieties of staging a scene include using models and cutouts and inserting a prop into the scene.

6: Taking a photo at a trick angle. The most common example of this is the use of forced perspective.

The Hoax Photo Archive
A catalog of photo fakery throughout history

Years Archived:
1840-1900 | 1900-1919 | 1920-1939 | 1940-1959 | 1960-1979 | 1980-1999 | 2000-2004 | 2005-Present

William ‘Dad’ Martin’s Freak Postcards. Martin made a fortune selling "freak" postcards that featured midwesterners interacting with oversized animals and vegetables. (1909-1910)	The Melon Party. In order to create this postcard of children eating a giant watermelon, photographer Alfred Stanley Johnson used wooden props. (1911)	Ocean Execution. A vacation snapshot was creatively recaptioned to become evidence of a brutal execution scene. (December 1913)
The Cottingley Fairies. Two young girls used paper cutouts to create a series of images of "fairies." These images are among the most famous fake photos of all time. (1917-1920)	Trotsky Vanishes. Once Leon Trotsky fell out of political favor, Soviet censors attempted to purge all evidence of his existence. This included removing him from photos such as this one. (Taken in 1919; altered ca. 1967)	Stotham, Massachusetts. An advertising monograph celebrated the architecture of a fictitious town. (Published in April 1920)
The Nest of a Fatu-Liva. An image of square eggs satirically proves that the camera never lies. (1921)	High-Pressure Hijinks. It is unlikely that water pressure alone is keeping this soldier suspended in air. (ca. 1923)	Raised Runway. An April Fool's day image shows a raised runway in a German city. (Undated. Possibly from the 1920s.)
Ada Emma Deane’s Armistice Day Series. Spiritualists claimed this image showed the spirits of dead war heroes. A newspaper identified the faces as living football players. (November 1924)	Bloody Sunday, 1905. Soviet textbooks claimed this was a photo of 1905's Bloody Sunday massacre in St. Petersburg. It was actually a reenactment of that event. (1925)	Mother Cat Stops Traffic. The news photographer arrived too late to capture the original scene, so he convinced the policeman to recreate it. (July 29, 1925)
Death in the Air. Spectacular images of World War I dog fights were eventually exposed as photos of model airplanes. (Published in 1933; debunked in 1984.)	Wisconsin’s Capitol Collapses. An April Fool's Day image of the Wisconsin state capitol collapsing due to an excess of gas generated by verbose debate. (April 1, 1933)	Baby Adolf. This fake baby photo of Adolf Hitler circulated widely during the mid-1930s. (Late 1933)
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