Susan Llewelyn Leach in the Christian Science Monitor:
These photos are part of ‘Stories From Russia,’ a current exhibition about the falsification of photos at the Photographers’ Gallery in London…
Airbrushing individuals out of your life is not new. Joseph Stalin routinely erased personae non gratae from official photographs. As his dictatorship progressed, early communist comrades gradually disappeared to the point where Stalin’s entourage started to look quite sparse at times.
Today, with the advent of inexpensive software, the manipulation of digital images is easier, faster, and harder to detect. As a result, the ethics of manipulation – the line between “improving” an image and altering it – are more vital to preserving public trust.
More here.