Famous Fake Photographs

Famous Fake Photographs (1999) Post 284

Famous Fake Photographs is a non-fiction book for children dealing with - you guessed it - famous fake photographs! Back in the 1990s a lot of readers (especially young ones) were less sophisticated than they are now, but those Believe it or Not columns were doing fine. I've been fascinated by those odd spot stories for decades, and I've always wanted to know more about the circumstances behind them. I'm also fascinated by the way different witnesses slant the same material. Photographs used to be assumed to be real representations, but these days we accept that many of them are not. Even old group shots can be manipulated to add in a family member who wasn't there on the day. My son made me a seamless photo of me with my little grandson, because he was asleep when I was there for the photo. It's not a fake, per se, because I certainly did often sit with him, but on that day it wasn't going to work, hence the picture. 
The photos in this book are different from that one; these are all older pictures that were probably deliberate fakes. It would be interesting to do an updated version, but these days there's an assumption that some photos are fake--even some that aren't!

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Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. She runs http://www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com and Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. If you enjoyed a post, or want to ask about any of my books or my manuscript assessment service.