A.I. Loves Fake Images. But They’ve Been a Thing Since Photography Began.
Nytimes reports that the Rijksmuseum’s exhibition “FAKE!” traces visual manipulation in photography from about 1860 to 1940; the show opens Friday and runs through May 25. The exhibition displays works ranging from John Heartfield’s 1934 magazine cover that mocked Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels to Ernest Eugène Appert’s staged 1871 photomontages that targeted the Paris Commune, early double‑exposure “spirit” photographs and the turn‑of‑the‑century “trick photography” made for entertainment.
It also notes that as newspapers and magazines adopted photography around 1920, new ethical expectations emerged even as regimes used image alteration to erase or glorify figures, for example the removal of Leon Trotsky from official Soviet photographs. Curator Hans Rooseboom is quoted saying manipulation has always been part of photography and that the exhibition should prompt viewers to ask, “Do I believe this?” Hany Farid warns that modern A.I.