The Commissar Vanishes

I have this pretty incredible book that involves some of the earliest 'photo manipulation'. It's called 'The Commissar Vanishes, and it's a collection of photos dated back to Stalins purges of the 1930's and 40's.

Basically, if you were a member of the Soviet Politburo, and you were on the 'outs' with Stalin (probably headed to the Gulag or executed) your image in a photo would be erased along with any memory of you. It was the ultimate form of damage control.


This picture below shows how the state would alter images for publication. In this case, creating a 'crowd' shot for Lenin, that appears 3 times as big as it actually was. Recently, FOX News had been caught doing something similar in it's footage of one of the 'Tea Party' protests.