Exhibit: Every Photograph Is A Fake
“Every photograph is a fake from start to finish,†the photographer Edward Steichen asserted in the first issue of Camera Work in 1903. In what amounts to a backhanded defense of photography as art, Steichen explained that “a purely impersonal, unmanipulated photograph†was “practically impossible.†“Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop,†an exhibition now up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (later traveling to the National Gallery and Houston’s Museum of Fine Art), makes a vigorous case for understanding the medium as Steichen did.
