Shocking images show how fake news isn’t just a 21st century problem

Rijksmuseum

Remember that image of the late Pope Francis from 2023 looking hip in a huge white puffer jacket? The photo went viral before it became clear that it was generated by the AI ​​tool Midjourney. Fake images and videos are flooding the internet these days, but a new exhibition explores how people have been manipulating photos almost since the medium was invented.

Take this startling image of a giant ear of corn (above). It was made – or perhaps the better word was created – by WH Martin in 1908 as part of a series of postcards depicting unusual sized produce or livestock. Martin photograph each element of his scene, cutting and pasting the photos together before re-capturing the new image.

His work is part of the exhibition FAKE! Early photo collages and photo montagesthrough May 25 at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Below is a photomontage postcard from before 1908, a vision of a future New York where cars could fly. The colors were added later in the printing process and the outlines slightly retouched, giving it the appearance of a drawing even though it is a photograph.

According to the Rijksmuseum, photographers began cutting and pasting images as early as 1860. The exhibition traces the development of image manipulation from then until World War II.

Below is a disturbing image of a cart with a huge head, dated between 1900 and 1910.

Finally, the era’s delight in massive farm produce rears its head again in a 1908 postcard in which geese, dwarfed by their human owners, are driven to market.