A picture’s worth a thousand words … but only some of them tell the whole truth

A new exhibition asks us to look again at classic images of war, protest and revolution, and sheds light on manipulated photographs

Vanessa Thorpe
Sun 5 May 2024 04.00 EDT

A Russian soldier raises a Soviet flag over Berlin’s Reichstag in Yevgeny Khaldei’s well-known 1945 photograph of wartime triumph.

But in the original image, the officer standing below can clearly be seen wearing a watch on both wrists. Khaldei’s shot, first printed in a Moscow magazine, was quickly withdrawn and the extra watch, which might actually have been a military compass, was removed for safety’s sake. Looting was not a good look and was punishable by death.

This little-known work of deliberate visual distortion is shown in a new exhibition, The Camera Never Lies, which opens later this month and tackles the public’s dwindling faith in photographs. Tristan Lund, who co-curated the new show, said: “It’s rare to see both the ‘before’ and ‘after’ prints together. The Khaldei photograph that went out later had one watch scratched out because the editors knew this tiny detail might have incriminated not just the officer but the whole Soviet army.

“In the second image, the sky is much darker and dramatic as well. It has been massively manipulated for effect.”
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