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N.Y. Evening Graphic
composograph illustrating article exploiting the
Peaches & "Daddy" Browning scandal
of 1926.
Composograph
refers to a forerunner method of
photo manipulation
and is a retouched photographic
collage
popularized by publisher and
physical culture
advocate
Bernarr Macfadden
in his
New York Evening Graphic
in 1924.
The
Graphic
was dubbed "The
Porno-Graphic
" by critics of the time
[1]
and has been called "one of the low points in the history of American journalism".
[2]
Exploitative and mendacious, in its short life (it closed operations in 1932) the
Graphic
defined "
tabloid journalism
" and launched the careers of
Ed Sullivan
and
Walter Winchell
, who developed the modern
gossip column
there. Film director
Sam Fuller
worked for the
Evening Graphic
as a crime reporter.
"Composographic" images were literally cut and pasted together using images of the heads or faces of current celebrities,
glued
onto staged images created in Macfadden's in-house studio, often using newspaper staffers as
body doubles
. Composite photographs, or
photomontages
, had been used in the nineteenth century by such photographers as
William Notman
to capture indoor scenes that would not have been otherwise possible before the flashbulb was developed.
[3]
Macfadden used them to represent events that were inconvenient to photograph, particularly with the equipment of the day: private bedrooms and bathtubs,
Rudolph Valentino
's unsuccessful surgery, Valentino's funeral, and notably on March 17, 1927, a full-page image of Valentino meeting
Enrico Caruso
in heaven. One early faked photograph?that of Alice Jones Rhinelander baring her breast in court (part of the
Kip Rhinelander
divorce trial)?is said to have boosted the Graphic's circulation by 100,000 copies.
[4]
Apart from their sensational subject matter, composographs have relevance as a historical reference point in the current debate over staged and doctored news photos. Some of the
Graphic
composographs have an unforgettable eerie visual impact. In a 1997 academic paper called "Staged, faked and mostly naked: Photographic innovations at the Evening Graphic, 1924?1932"
[5]
and a shorter online essay,
[6]
Radford University professor Bob Stepno points out that the
Graphic
was published before improvements in photojournalism technology and standards that made possible the photorealism of
Magnum Photos
,
Black Star
and others during World War II.
References
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