Vie avant Photoshop7 photos

Exemples of photo manipulation before the digital age.

The advent of Photoshop greatly simplified and diversified the art of photography. However, it would be naive to assume that no one performed “photo jokes” or other manipulations on images before its invention. Photographers at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries also enjoyed playing tricks on viewers through illusions and unusual photo montages.

The humor in some of these photographs may seem questionable to modern readers. Yet the skill displayed in these falsifications—these manipulations of images—is truly impressive, especially when considering that they were all created before the digital era, with some dating back as far as the 1880s.

The majority of these photographs are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.