The Hoax Photo Archive: Celebrities

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

Category: Celebrities

Dickens in America. An early example of how a celebrity's appearance could be tidied up in the darkroom. (December 1867)	Oprah’s Head Transplant. It's Oprah Winfrey's head, but it's Ann-Margret's body. (August 26, 1989)	O.J.‘s Darkened Mug Shot. Time magazine was accused of racism when it decided to use a darkened version of O.J. Simpson's mugshot on its cover. (June 27, 1994)
Tootsie Redressed. Dustin Hoffman sued Los Angeles magazine for $5 million on account of this photo of his head pasted onto the body of a model wearing a silk gown. (Mar 1997 issue of Los Angeles magazine)	Kate Winslet’s Legs. Kate Winslet complained that photo editors made her look too skinny on this GQ cover. (February 2003)	The Real Julia. Julia Roberts' head was pasted onto a younger version of her body. (July 2003)
Martha’s Last Laugh. Newsweek indicated nowhere on the cover that this shot was actually a composite image of Martha Stewart's head pasted onto a model's body. (March 2005)	“I can promise, this will never get done”. Artist Alison Jackson uses lookalikes to create images of "celebrities ostensibly caught unawares." (Created in 2005. Circulating online since 2008.)	Charlton Heston’s Home Gun Collection. This series of pictures documents a remarkable gun collection, but not that of Charlton Heston. (Circulating online since Apr 2008)
Cruise vs. von Stauffenberg. United Artists was mistakenly accused of altering an image of German officer Claus von Stauffenberg to make him appear to resemble Tom Cruise. (Controversy from June 2008)	M.C. Escher Golf. A surreal effect of impossible geometry may have been caused by the use of a telephoto lens to take this picture. (Taken Aug 18, 2006. Published June 2008)	A Whiter Beyonce. Critics accused L'Oreal of lightening Beyonce's skin color in this advertisement for its cosmetics. (August 2008)
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