Manipulating a picture is pretty easy to do nowadays.
A sepia filter is just a push of a button away on Instagram. Scores of iPhone apps let you do things like make people look old, get rid of red eye, and add a handful of effects.
But in a dark room? That's a whole different animal.
Yesterday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York opened its newest exhibit, Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop.
The images are a testament to what is photography is capable of, even without 21st century technology. Its pretty incredible — some of the effects that these photographers labored over in the darkroom are way beyond the capabilities of the average Photoshop user.
A postcard shows a German soldier crushing members of the Triple Entente together during World War I.
Unidentified German artist
A Powerful Collision, 1914
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Twentieth-century Photography Fund,
2010 2010.296,193
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art
This double portrait shows a man as both artist and model, each regarding the other with cool irony.
Maurice Guibert, French, 1856–1913
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec as Artist and Model, ca. 1900
Gelatin silver print
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art
The photographer managed to put a woman in place of the stem of a lamp.
Grete Stern, Argentinian, born Germany, 1904-1999
Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home, 1948
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund,
2012 2012.10
Courtesy of Galería Jorge Mara - La Ruche, Buenos Aires
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art
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