Many of the assigned readings this week dealt with the lack of credibility which tends to plague online history sources. The issue of source legitimacy is perhaps a more discussed issue in recent decades; however, I would argue it is one that has been of primary concern to historians for centuries. Cohen and Rosenzweig's assertion that "Fake photographs long predate the web", reminded me of an image I've come across in a number of local history books. A plaque in London's Greenway Park commemorates the 1881 sinking of the ship "Victoria" which - primarily due to cumbersome clothing and the general population's inability to swim - resulted in the loss of approximately 182 lives. The event garnered international attention and it was Mr. John Barron's photo, romantically titled "The Last Trip of the Victoria", which gained the most significant circulation in papers.
According to Ken McTaggart's work, "London's Darkest Hours", the image is not what it appears to be. It seems that on May 24th, the day of the disaster, Mr. Barron had forgotten his camera and therefore simply combined two previously developed photos, one of the Victoria and the other of Ward's Hotel in Springbank Park, to create a new image. McTaggart's careful examination of the composite image unearthed numerous errors (including painted-in smoke, an impossible bow wave, and the lack of a captain at the wheel) which expose the previously famous photograph as a forgery. This photo was from 1881! Though identifying a forgery was perhaps more simple in this case due to the archaic technology used to meld the two photos, it would have taken a significant amount of time, sifting through various non-digitized archives to find the original sources.
With the sheer amount of information now readily available to historians on the web, authenticity is of course going to be an area of concern but then again, it always has been. Perhaps Daniel Cohen's discussion of Blogging sums up my feelings about digital sources best: "Blogs are just like other forms of writing, such as books, in that there's a whole lot of trash out there - and some gems worth reading."images:
Ken McTaggart, London's Darkest Hours, ed. Debra Rogers (London, ON: Ken D McTaggart, 1999), 40 - 41.
1 comment:
Hi Grace -- you might find spirit photographs from the 19th and early-20th centuries interesting. Rob MacDougall's blog, Old is the New New, had a couple of posts about them in case you're curious. He mentions a museum exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on such photographs and the approach the curators there took regarding their authenticity.
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