Author : Pam Morris March 15 2015

An early instance of a photograph being deliberately staged for a creative outcome but resulting in the unsuspectingly public believing them to be evidential fact was a series of photographs staged by two young cousins in the UK. The girls used cut-out fairy illustrations pasted on cardboard in a whimsical tableau featuring the younger girl (Figure 7). The images were created as pure fantasy and never intended to mislead. However, Arthur Conan Doyle the author who was also an ardent spiritualist published the photos where he interpreted them as providing clear and visible evidence of psychic phenomena. His reputation as an intellectual gave the photos credibility which was not officially debunked until the 1980s when the girls confessed to them being faked[i].

Figure 7 Elise Wright Fairy from Cottingley, 1917.

Enhancing images for aesthetic purposes has been part of photography since its inception. The viewing audience however expects to be able to discern the purpose of an image in order for them to appreciate it as fine art rather than documented evidence of fact.

[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies Retrieved March 3rd 2015