A photo of Kate Moss taken by celebrity portraitist Sante D'Orazio appeared on the July 19, 1993 cover of Australia's Who Weekly (bottom -- original in color). The magazine used it to illustrate an article about the super-skinny look being the latest fad in the world of modelling.

Six months later the same photo appeared on the cover of American Photo. But careful readers might have noticed a few differences. The image was flipped horizontally, reversing left and right. But more significantly, Moss's nipples had disappeared. American Photo only revealed the deletion in a later issue, in response to a letter to the editor. Its editors stated they had decided to digitally remove Moss's nipples "as a matter of taste." However, a smaller, nippled version of the photo had appeared inside the same issue of the magazine, on the contents page.

Associates of figure-skater Tonya Harding clubbed rival Nancy Kerrigan in the knee as she left the ice during practice at the 1994 U.S. championships in Detroit. Kerrigan recovered in time to compete at the Olympic games in Lillehammer a few weeks later, at which Harding was also scheduled to compete. So the media eagerly speculated about what would happen when the two rivals met at practice for the first time since the incident.

On the day before the two skaters were scheduled to meet, Newsday published a photo on its cover showing what the next day's practice might look like. A caption in the lower-right corner identified the photo as a "composite illustration." Nevertheless, Newsday was widely criticized for blurring the line between fact and fiction.

Former football star O.J. Simpson was charged with the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. After a widely publicized slow-speed pursuit, Simpson was taken into custody by the police, who then released Simpson's mug shot to the media.

Time magazine decided to use this mug shot on its June 27th cover (top), but first they asked photo-illustrator Matt Mahurin to artistically interpret it. Mahurin darkened the photo and reduced the size of the prisoner ID number. Time managing editor James Gaines offered this description of the resulting cover:


However, many people responded to the cover far less charitably. Critics charged Time with racism, claiming that by darkening Simpson's features the magazine had emphasized his skin color and gave him a more "menacing" appearance. Benjamin Chavis of the N.A.A.C.P. argued that the cover made Simpson seem like "some kind of animal." Journalists suggested that, since the mug shot was a news photo, it should never have been altered at all.

Unfortunately for Time, its rival Newsweek ran the same mug shot on its cover (bottom) that week, without altering it. The two covers appeared side-by-side on newsstands, making Time's decision to darken the photo far more visible. Time later issued an apology to its readers.

Los Angeles Magazine ran a photo spread in its March 1997 issue titled "Grand Illusions." Photographs of famous movie stars were digitally altered in order to dress the actors in different clothes by top designers. The spread included an altered version of the publicity still for the 1982 movie Tootsie, starring Dustin Hoffman. Los Angeles magazine digitally redressed Hoffman by placing his head onto the body of a model wearing a "butter-colored silk gown by Richard Tyler and Ralph Lauren heels" (top).

Hoffman subsequently sued the magazine for $5 million, claiming his publicity rights had been violated and that use of his image deceptively implied a form of product endorsement.

The Federal District Court agreed with Hoffman and ordered the magazine to pay a total of $3 million in compensatory and punitive damages. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the judgement, holding that the magazine spread was speech protected by the First Amendment, noting that if the entire article was taken in context, it was obvious the magazine had not intended to deceive readers.

An image of an enormous cat (approximately the size of a large dog) being held in the arms of a bearded man began circulating around the internet in early 2000. The picture attracted attention because it didn't seem possible for a cat to be that large, but the chance that the cat was real couldn't be ruled out either.


At first the picture stood alone without explanation, but at some point an unknown prankster added a caption to the image, claiming it showed "Snowball," a monster cat owned by one Rodger Degagne of Ottawa, Canada. Mr. Degagne had supposedly adopted Snowball's mother (a normal-sized cat) after finding her abandoned near a Canadian nuclear lab. She later gave birth to Snowball, who proceeded to grow into the oversized, 87-pound cat "Mr. Degagne" was shown holding.

The photo attracted so much attention that it was eventually featured on television shows such as NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and ABC's Good Morning America. However, both Snowball's story and her picture were fake. In May 2001 Cordell Hauglie, a resident of Edmonds, Washington, came forward to admit that 'Snowball' was actually his daughter's cat. The cat's real name was 'Jumper,' and it only weighed twenty-one pounds. To prove he was telling the truth, Hauglie produced pictures showing him holding the actual-sized Jumper, as well as a picture of Jumper sitting in a window.

Hauglie explained that he created the fake image by using widely available photo manipulation software and had then e-mailed the image to a few friends as a joke, never intending that it would pass beyond those friends. But a few months later the picture had spread worldwide. Hauglie only realized what had happened when the picture started appearing on TV shows, in newspapers, and in magazines. To his amazement, he had unintentionally become an internet celebrity simply by sharing a joke with a few friends.

Hauglie reports that the picture made him famous among cat lovers, and that he has frequently been invited to attend cat shows as a celebrity guest.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison mailed its 2001-2002 undergraduate application to fifty-thousand potential students. The cover (top) boasted a crowd scene from a 1993 Badger football game. Most of the students in the scene were white, but on the left-hand side was a smiling black student.

Anna Gould, a staffer at the Daily Cardinal, UW-Madison's student newspaper, noticed that everyone in the picture was in shadow except for the lone black student, who had the sun shining directly on him. Intrigued, Gould tracked down the original photo (middle) and discovered that the black student, Diallo Shabazz, wasn't in it. She later found out that he hadn't even attended the game. Evidently his face had been digitally inserted into the cover photo.

When the revelation broke in September 2000, embarrassed university officials admitted they had, without Shabazz's permission, lifted his face from a 1994 photo (bottom) of him attending a campus orientation rally, and inserted it into the photo of the 1993 Badger game. They explained they had wanted to highlight the campus's racial diversity, but while putting together the brochure had been unable to find a suitable photo. So they created one. The university subsequently attempted to recall all the brochures that had been sent out.

The incident inspired a satirical article titled "Black Guy Photoshopped In" in the humor magazine The Onion.

This image was created by professional photographer Ralph Clevenger. He's been quoted as saying:
Clevenger intended the photo to be a work of art. He never claimed it was an unmanipulated photo. However, it subsequently found its way online where someone appended a caption stating that the photo "came from a Rig Manager for Global Marine Drilling in St. Johns, Newfoundland. They actually have to divert the path of these things away from the rig by towing them with ships!" Global Marine Drilling is a real company, but it had nothing to do with this photo.

This photo began circulating around the internet in 2001, along with a caption that claimed it was "a picture of a sonic boom." To many the photo seemed too sensational to be real, but in fact it was authentic.

The plane was an F/A-18 Hornet assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron One Five One (VFA-151). It was photographed over the Pacific on July 7, 1999 by Ensign John Gay.

Cones of condensation around planes are a fairly common phenomenon. They're formed when there is a combination of the right amount of humidity and enough aerodynamic pressure. A plane does not have to be breaking the sound barrier for a cone to form, but in this case the plane reportedly was about to do so.

The photo began circulating after it was featured on the Astronomy Picture of the Day site.

Air Force helicopters have flown in front of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, and sharks do attack their prey by leaping out of the water. However, a Great White shark has never attacked a helicopter in San Francisco Bay. The top image was created by an unknown hoaxer who pasted an image of a breaching Great White (middle), taken by South African photographer Charles Maxwell, into a picture of a USAF helicopter hovering in front of the Golden Gate Bridge (bottom), taken by Lance Cheung.

A caption that often accompanied this image read:


National Geographic had not nominated it as "photo of the year." But in 2005 National Geographic did publish an article debunking the photo as a hoax.

Soon after September 11, 2001, a sensational photo began circulating via email. It showed a tourist posing for a snapshot on top of the World Trade Center as a hijacked plane approached from behind. An accompanying caption explained that the photo came from a camera found in the rubble of the world trade center. Apparently the photo had been taken just seconds before disaster struck.



The image quickly circulated to millions of people. It received attention from both national and international media. Perhaps the source of the fascination with it (besides its remarkable subject matter) was that it counterposed a scene of such innocence (a tourist posing for a holiday snapshot) with a scene of such horror (the hijacked plane approaching from behind). In this way, it evoked the prevailing feeling in America immediately following the attack—a feeling of having been wrenched from an age of innocence into a new nightmare reality. The picture also spoke to the surprise nature of the attack (the tourist's back is turned, and he seems unaware of the fate that is soon to engulf him).


No, the picture was not real. A number of clues revealed this:

• It stretched credulity to believe that a camera could have survived such a fall
• September 11 was a warm day. The temperature was in the high sixties that morning. And yet the man in the photo was wearing heavy clothing.
• The man would have been standing on the south tower of the world trade center -- the building with the observation deck. And yet the north tower was the first tower to be hit. Therefore, if we are to believe this picture is real, we must assume the man was happily posing for his photo as the other building was burning off to his side.
• The plane that hit the south tower approached from the south. However, it is evident from the landmarks behind the man that the plane in this photo is approaching from the north.
• It's the wrong type of plane. Both of the jets that crashed into the World Trade Center were 767s, whereas a 757 is shown in this photo.
• If the plane is approaching at high speed, why isn't it blurry in the photo?
• The plane hit the south tower at 9:03 am, at which time the observation deck was closed. It only would have opened at 9:30 am.

Absolute proof of the photo's lack of authenticity came when online sleuths realized that the plane in the photo had been digitally cut-and-pasted from a photo taken by Jonathan Derden, available on airliners.net.



The popularity of the "tourist guy" photo inspired the creation of numerous parodies. The initial spoofs placed the tourist guy in other historical tragedies, such as the hindenburg disaster. Or people replaced the airplane with other menacing entities, such as the StayPuff Marshmallow Man (a reference to the movie Ghostbusters). Eventually, Tourist Guy became such a widely recognized pop-culture icon, that people were depicting him popping up in just about any photo at all, as a visual gag.

Below is a sample of some of the Tourist Guy parodies.




In the months following the appearance of the 'Tourist Guy' photo, a worldwide search ensued to discover who the man in the picture really was.


Jose Penteado: Not the Tourist Guy In November 2001, a Brazilian man came forward suggesting that he might be Tourist Guy. He denied ever having posed for a picture on top of the World Trade Center, but he certainly looked like the guy in the picture. Penteado theorized that some of his friends must have pasted his face onto someone else’s body. Based on the possibility that he might be the guy, Volkswagen's Brazilian subsidiary offered him a spot in a television commercial, though they later thought twice about the wisdom of associating themselves with the World Trade Center disaster and rescinded the offer.

A few weeks later a far more convincing candidate came forward. The friends of a Hungarian man named Peter Guzli identified him on a Hungarian news site as the real Tourist Guy. Guzli then supplied Wired Magazine with photos of himself posed in other areas of the World Trade Center observation deck. He explained that he had snapped the famous photo of himself (minus the airplane) while on vacation in November, 1997. Following September 11, he pasted the plane into the background, intending the visual gag as a bit of dark humor to share with his friends, little realizing that his creation would soon spread around the world and be seen by millions of people. He told Wired, "This was a joke meant for my friends, not such a wide audience."

Photos of Peter Guzli