hi everybody,

this news is a couple of days old, you might have heard it.
piotr skornicki’s photograph of a bus stop with a group of pigeons sitting on its roof was awarded second prize in the nature category of a local polish press photography competition GPP. when the results were announced and awarded photographs appeared on the web someone nosy almost immediately figured that skornicki’s photograph had been doctored. pigeons were multiplied in PS. photographer lost his job at ‘gazeta wyborcza’ and gave back his award.

you can check the photograph <a href=" http://serwisy.gazeta.pl/kraj/1,34397,4139815.htmlhttp://serwisy.gazeta.pl/kraj/1,34397,4139815.html">here.

as this is the first controversy of this kind on the polish press market, my magazine asked me to write a text on the history of doctoring in the press photography. i realize that clone stamping pigeons is nothing when you compare it to clone stamping smoke over beirut, but i reckon it is a good pretext to write about really serious and dangerous phenomenon.

i am looking for as many examples of photo manipulations as possible. be it staging, photoshopping, giving misleading captions or whatever comes to your minds. your examples might be up to date or totally historical. i’d like them to be local and not really known to the international audience. they don’t have to consider important political issues, they might be totally unimportant and stupid.

brian walski, reuters’ photographs from lebanon, oj simpson, lenin and trotsky, NG’s moving pyramids, eugene appert’s pictures of french communards, martha stewart on the cover of newsweek. let it be the start of the list.

thanks in advance,
kuba