The Hoax Photo Archive: War

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: War

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)	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)	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.)
The Falling Soldier. Despite allegations that Robert Capa staged this famous war photo, historical research shows that he did not. (September 5, 1936)	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)	British Soldier in Basra. This digital composite slipped past the editors of the LA Times and ran on the paper's front page. (Created March 29, 2003.)	Islamic Hostage Action-Figure Hoax. Hostage "John Adam," whose photo appeared on internet bulletin boards used by Iraqi rebels, turned out to be a Cody action-figure doll. (February 1, 2005)
Fake Smoke Over Beirut. A freelance photographer heightened the drama of this image distributed by Reuters by adding additional smoke. (August 5, 2006)
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