#1 The Surgeon's Photograph, Robert Kenneth Wilson, 1934
It was completely fake. In the 1990s, one of the conspirators confessed in his last moments. They'd built a toy submarine, attached a carved wooden head and neck to it, and floated it around while taking pictures. The "monster" was about a foot tall.
The intent behind editing photos matters a ton! Some people choose to fake or edit their pictures purely for the joy of entertaining themselves and others. However, others have political, social, or other agendas in mind when they stage or edit images. In the former case, everyone (except the incredibly naive and gullible) is in on the joke. In the latter case, the trickery is crafted to try to fool even the most intelligent, observant, and educated members of society.
On the one hand, being skeptical about the information and images you come across online is healthy: you’re less likely to be tricked by someone’s misinformation (false info spread accidentally) or disinformation (false info spread intentionally to deceive).
On the other hand, if you are skeptical of everything, manipulative and malicious actors who traffic in fake news can turn that skepticism against you for their goals. You might run into situations in the future where you mistrust legitimate information simply because you know that disinformation exists somewhere. This is known as the liar’s dividend.
#2 President Abraham Lincoln, Created Around 1865 By Printmaker William Pate
The irony is almost too much to handle. Lincoln, the president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, is depicted in his most iconic full-length portrait literally wearing the body of a man who spent his career defending slavery.
#3 The War Diary And Photographs By Wesley David Archer, 1930s
The blurriness and grain of early film photography actually helped sell the illusion. Details that might give away the miniatures get lost in the low resolution. From a distance, a model plane on fire looks close enough to the real thing, especially when people want to believe what they're seeing.
Archer wasn't trying to fool anyone exactly because this was part of his war diary, a way to illustrate experiences or create dramatic scenes that would have been impossible to photograph in actual combat. But once images like this enter circulation, context gets lost.
The liar’s dividend is, in a nutshell, a situation where a malicious actor will claim that real, legitimate information is either misinformation or disinformation.
“This approach has the benefit of muddying the waters so that people, especially those who traffic in misinformation, are able to evade or blunt scrutiny embedded in accurate words or actions that are then not believed by others,” Encyclopædia Britannica explains.
“In a world in which information can easily be falsified, a politician might claim that they did not do or say what they in fact did or said. The mistrust in the mainstream news media, for instance, allows political actors around the world to evade or blunt legitimate scrutiny of their words, decisions, or actions. The liar’s dividend pays off for those who sow mistrust and then use that same mistrust to their own advantage.”
For example, in this day and age of widely available generative artificial intelligence, this might mean that a corrupt person might claim that genuine photo, video, and audio evidence incriminating them was faked by AI. They are using the mere existence of AI deep fakes to protect their illegal and unethical behavior.
#4 Roosevelt On A Moose, 1912
The image was political propaganda and humor rolled into one. Everyone knew it was fake but it was meant to be obvious. The photo played up Roosevelt's outdoorsman image and the party's mascot at the same time. It circulated as a novelty, not as deception.
#5 The Cottingley Fairies, Frances Griffith And Elsie Wright, 1920
Despite skeptics pointing out problems with the photos, they became some of the most famous images in the world. Even Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the hyper-logical Sherlock Holmes, championed them as real. The girls stuck to their story for decades.
It wasn't until the late 1970s that the photos were definitively debunked. The cousins finally admitted they'd cut fairy illustrations out of a children's book, propped them up with hatpins, and photographed them. The "experts" who'd authenticated the images had been fooled by paper cutouts.
#6 Canadian PM William Lyon Mackenzie King Removes King George VI, 1939
So he had King George VI edited out. The published version showed just King and Queen Elizabeth, making it look like a more intimate moment. It was a weird flex, cropping out the actual king to make yourself look more important.
Basic media literacy revolves around the idea that before you believe or reshare any claim you find online, you stop, step back, and evaluate the information and its source. Of course, this is hard to do day to day.
We are bombarded with an endless stream of information, opinions, and images on social media and in the news every single day. What’s more, most of us have serious responsibilities and commitments (work, studies, parenting, volunteering, care, etc.) that eat up most of our time and energy. So, for many people, double-checking every single claim for veracity is impractical. Therefore, it is best to gauge the source's reliability instead.
Check the author’s reliability and trustworthiness. Look at their posting history. See if they properly reference and credit the information they cover or if they try to spin their emotional and divisive opinions as cold, hard facts. Think about what the source might be trying to make you feel, and what their goal would be.
Who benefits if the information you hear or read makes you feel a certain way, say, angry, anxious, upset, frustrated, or even outraged? Does the source correct false info? How transparent are they?
#7 "Daydream", 1870–1890
The image is a beautifully crafted example of Victorian combination photography, where multiple negatives, hand-painted elements, and careful darkroom work were combined to create a single image telling a story.
#8 A Manipulated Image Of Nikolai Yezhov And Joseph Stalin, 1930s
The practice of removing fallen officials from photographs and historical records was standard procedure in Stalinist Russia, creating what George Orwell essentially documented in 1984 as the "memory hole."
#9 "Man Startled By His Own Reflection", Leonard De Koningh, 1870s
If you do happen to have the time and inclination to dig a little deeper, cross-reference the information you find with multiple sources.
A good rule of thumb is to avoid resharing information that plays on your emotions, feels either too good or too bad to be true, or validates most or all of your beliefs.
It is better to slow down and evaluate the information rather than rush to reshare claims that might misinform your family, friends, and strangers alike.
#10 Space Shuttle Breaking Through Clouds, NASA
The image on the right shows what the original photo actually looked like. Gray, murky, flat. NASA enhanced the colors, boosted the contrast, and cleaned up the clouds to make it more visually striking for public consumption.
This kind of editing sits in a gray area. NASA wasn't faking the shuttle launch or creating something that didn't happen, they were just making a real photo more dramatic. But it raises questions about what counts as documentary photography versus promotional material.
#11 Ralph Lauren Blue Label Jeans Poster, 2009
When people pointed out how disturbing it was, Ralph Lauren initially tried to shut down criticism by issuing copyright takedown notices against blogs that posted the image. That made it worse. The backlash exploded, forcing the company to apologize and admit they'd gone too far with the retouching.
#12 Baby Adolf, Unknown Photographer/Acme Newspictures, 1933
It wasn't Adolf. The German consulate had to write newspapers to correct them. Five years later, an Ohio woman named Harriet Downs saw the photo and recognized her own son, John May Warren. The original picture showed a normal-looking baby, and they realised someone had doctored it by darkening shadows to make him look sinister.
Once you’ve looked through these photos and read all their backstories, we’d like to hand the discussion over to you, dear Pandas.
Which of these edited and staged historical photos did you genuinely think were real before you came across this list? Are there any important fake vintage images that you think we missed?
How do you gauge the reliability of a claim, photo, or source these days? How good would you say you are at spotting photo-edits and AI deep fakes?
#13 "Tourist Guy", 2001
It fell apart fast. People noticed the plane was the wrong type, the date stamp showed the wrong season, and the tourist's clothing didn't match September weather. Eventually a guy from Hungary came forward and admitted he'd made it as a hoax.
But the image took on a second life. It became one of the early internet memes, with people photoshopping the "tourist guy" into other disasters and historical events like the Hindenburg, the Titanic, and dinosaur extinctions, you name it.
#14 "The Largest Ear Of Corn Grown" – W.H. Martin, 1908
Martin was a master of the "tall tale postcard," a hugely popular genre in early 20th-century America that played on regional pride and good old-fashioned exaggeration. By combining negatives, cutting and pasting prints, and manipulating scale, he produced dozens of images featuring impossibly giant produce, fish, and livestock.
#15 Lunch Atop A Skyscraper, 1932
It was staged. The photo was a publicity stunt orchestrated to promote the new building. The workers were actual construction guys, not models, but they were positioned there specifically for the camera. It was meant to generate buzz and show how bold and modern the project was.
#16 "General Grant At City Point" – Composite Photograph, 1902
The composite was created by L.C. Handy in 1902, decades after the Civil War ended, probably to create a more marketable, dramatic image of the famous general than any authentic photographs could provide.
For years, it circulated as a genuine wartime photograph, fooling historians and the public alike. It wasn't until careful analysis revealed inconsistencies in lighting, scale, and perspective that the deception was exposed.
#17 Taking Our Geese To Market, Martin Post Card Company, 1909
Beyond being a precursor to Surrealism, these manipulated photos served a practical purpose: regional marketing. This one promotes Watertown, Wisconsin's famous stuffed geese, and other towns used these exaggerated images to create myths about their agricultural dominance.
#18 Collision Between A Car And A Steamroller, Alfred Stanley Johnson Jr, 1915
Johnson pieced together individual images, sometimes overlapping them, to create this chaotic moment frozen in time. Your brain automatically fills in the story: the crash, the passengers flying through the air, what happened before and after.
#19 Asian Tsunami 2004
The image is a composite, likely combining photos from different locations at different times. The real tsunami was devastating enough, but it didn't look like this Hollywood disaster movie shot.
The fake spread rapidly online and through email forwards during the immediate aftermath of the disaster. People were desperate for information and images, and this one was dramatic enough to seem real.
#20 Benito Mussolini Removes Horse Handler, 1942
So the handler was airbrushed out. The published version showed Il Duce alone, mastering the horse through sheer force of will. Never mind that someone off-camera was actually keeping the animal under control.