Photographer’s Analog Archive Contradicts Photo Hoax

Luis Acosta writes “Ken Light, whose 1971 photo of John Kerry was digitally doctored to make it appear that Kerry shared a stage with Jane Fonda and then distributed widely throughout cyberspace, should be applauded for maintaining a good archive of his analog photo negatives, which has enabled him to refute the hoax. He writes about the lessons for his Ethical Problems in Photography class in
today’s Washington Post
(free registration required).
At age 20 Light knew that “negatives are sacred, and that every roll of film must be carefully filed away for future use.” He notes “how easy and professional-looking these distortions of truth have become in the age of Photoshop.” Light says that this hit home for him when he found that “somebody had pulled my Kerry picture off my agency’s Web site, stuck Fonda at his side, and then used the massive, unedited reach of the Internet to distribute it all over the world.””