A Photograph That Tells A Story

 


 We all know that the camera never lies; except we all know that it does, and quite often.

The level of deception varies hugely. Maybe a filter to smooth your skin tone out and make your eyes a bit bigger, maybe a touch of photoshop magic to give you that physique that you so desire; sometimes to hilarious effect.

Photomanipulation is not a new phenomenon. The idea to trick the viewer is almost as old as photography itself; the first photograph was created in 1814 and by 1860 photomanipulation was being used politically, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's portrait was forged by sticking Lincoln's head to the Southern politician John Calhoun's much less scrawny body.

This story begins in 1917 and concerns two cousins: Frances Griffiths aged 9, and 16-year-old Elsie Wright who duped thousands across the world including Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, into believing in fairies.

This hadn’t been their original intention, they just wanted to get out of trouble for coming home wet after playing in Cottingley Brook which ran along the bottom of their gardens. What better excuse than the fairies made them do it? Elsie’s mother didn’t believe them, so the girls set about manufacturing the proof. They borrowed Elsie’s father Arthur’s small box camera and set off to photograph the fairies. They returned with a photographic plate for Arthur to develop in his studio. The photograph shows Frances gazing at a group of dancing fairies. Arthur Wright wasn’t convinced that it was genuine even after the girls produced another photograph some months later showing Elsie balancing a goblin on her hand. He thought that they had probably used cut-out figures secured on wires. After all, Elsie was a keen artist and the images bore a striking resemblance to published illustrations in the popular ‘Princess Mary’s Gift Book’ published in 1914, of which Frances had a copy. Mr Wright was right.

Elsie’s mother Polly Wright was now less sceptical, she had the proof of another world. She was interested in Theosophy which held the belief that humankind was undergoing a process of transformation that would lead eventually to the perfection of the species. Mrs Wright presented the girl’s photographs at a meeting of The Theosophical Society in Bradford, the title of the lecture that evening was “Fairy Life”. The images were met with enthusiasm by the society’s members particularly Edward Gardner, one of its leading members who took the opportunity to promote the Theosophist message and proclaimed that the images were proof that great metaphysical changes were happening.

Photographic expert Harold Snelling examined the pictures and confirmed them authentic images of “what was in front of the camera”, cleverly avoiding saying that they were actually images of fairies. Gardner used the images in his lectures and reproduced them as prints to sell to his audience. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle saw them published in a Spiritualist magazine and as a Spiritualist himself, asked Elsie and Arthur Wright if he could use them in an article about fairies that he had been commissioned to write in the Christmas edition of Strand Magazine.

The girls produced three more fairy images, the last, “Fairies and their Sunbath”, was taken in 1920.

Discussion about the veracity of the Cottingley Fairies continued until the 1980s when the editor of the British Journal of Photography, Geoffrey Crawley conducted an investigation and declared the images to be fakes. In 1983 Elsie confessed to the hoax. What began as a ruse, suggested by Frances to get out of trouble, got out of hand. The cousins were astonished at how easily people had accepted the images but Frances maintained all her life that the last image showed real fairies. It is difficult to understand how people were fooled but the idea of fairies being real may have been embraced by the public at the time because of the horrors of WW1, people wanted to believe in the supernatural and the possibility of another realm of existence.


For a laugh and to see some up-to-date photographic trickery, have a look at James the Photoshop Guy https//:www,jamesfridman.com

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