The Hoax Photo Archive: Photojournalism

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: Photojournalism

The Valley of the Shadow of Death. Cannonballs were strewn across a road to enhance the drama of this melancholy war scene. (April 23, 1855)	Interior of the Secundra Bagh. Human bones were disinterred and scattered around to recreate the aftermath of a battle. (March or April 1858)	A Sharpshooter’s Last Sleep. Civil War photographers used a corpse as a movable prop. (Taken in 1863. Exposed as a fake in 1961.)
Ocean Execution. A vacation snapshot was creatively recaptioned to become evidence of a brutal execution scene. (December 1913)	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)	The Perambulating Skull. Arthur Rothstein was accused of using a steer's skull as a movable prop in order to exaggerate drought conditions in the Great Plains. (May 1936)
The Falling Soldier. Despite allegations that Robert Capa staged this famous war photo, historical research shows that he did not. (September 5, 1936)	The Nazi Air Marker Hoax. Pictures of unusual shapes in farmers' fields led to fears that the Nazis were planning an air attack on the United States. (August 10, 1942)	The Master Race. The British Army created this picture of an unkempt German soldier as part of its propaganda efforts. (May 8, 1943)
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. This is probably the most famous photo from World War II. It was not staged, despite persistent rumors to the contrary. (February 23, 1945)	Red Army Flag Over Reichstag. This photo was both staged and doctored in an attempt to create a Soviet version of the Americans' Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima image. (May 2, 1945)	Dr. Schweitzer in the Congo. More than thirty years after its initial publication, this famous photo by W. Eugene Smith was discovered to be two photos composited together. (1954)
The Missing Pole. An unknown photo editor decided to airbrush out the pole that was awkwardly situated behind Mary Ann Vecchio's head in the original version of this photo. (May 4, 1970)	Yeah Eckerd. The news photographer staged the scene by having a fan write the phrase "Yeah Eckerd" on the soles of his feet. (1981)	The Case of the Moving Pyramids. In what became the first high-profile example of digital photo manipulation, National Geographic moved the pyramids slightly closer together to fit within the frame of the cover. (February 1982)
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