What's Really Shown in Popular Pictures: Real Events vs. Fake Stories

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Retro photos often appear on the network today, behind which unusual stories from the past are hidden. People willingly share such pictures and sentimental stories, so these materials often go viral. However, many of them are real fakes: either the story is invented from scratch, or the photo itself is not real. In this review, the story of five such cases.

Female College Students in Sex Education Class (1929)

The photo is striking as a real document of the "era of innocence" - the girls are clearly shocked, but cannot take their eyes off the materials, which the teacher allegedly demonstrates to them. In our enlightened time, when it is difficult to surprise young people with anything, such a 100-year-old naivety evokes tenderness. Unfortunately, the photo is one hundred percent fraudulent. The real one in it is only the year of creation, since in fact this is a frame from the film. The movie Wild Party, released in 1929, is a romantic comedy about the love of an anthropology teacher and a female college student. In it, by the way, starred the silent movie star Clara Bow. The film was her first experience in a talkie. According to the plot, the girls are not looking at the lecture with such interest, but at the new young professor! So the photo can rightfully be considered fake.

The appearance on the street of girls in shorts caused a stir and an accident (1937)

Another document of a completely different era, because today even the appearance of absolutely naked ladies would probably cause less surprise, and in a popular picture even a car crashed into a post, passers-by stopped and openly stared at the young women of fashion. The girls walk hand in hand, probably to support each other. The photograph was indeed taken in Toronto, as it is portrayed, in 1937. And indeed, at that time, shorts were still wild exotic. For clothes of this length, they could be fined, and even a little earlier - even kicked out of the beach (there are pictures where a special servant measures the length of skirts from the knee). However, this image is a staged photo taken by Alexandra Studios. Other photographs from the same series serve as proof; they even show the same car that allegedly had an accident before. It can be seen that the shorts really arouse the attention of passers-by, but far from so intent. So the men who blocked the road, and the car at the post, and the cabman who braked up are just extras successfully placed in the frame. However, the picture really turned out to be bright, conveying the spirit of its time.

American nurses land on the battlefield in Normandy (June 1944)

In this famous picture, it is customary to discuss the clothes of frivolous nurses, which clearly does not correspond to the time and place: shoes, skirts … In fact, among the 156 thousand fighters who landed in Normandy on that memorable day, of course, there were also nurses, only the real footage of the chronicles shows us a completely different picture.

As for the promoted image, it can also be found in photo banks, only it is dated January 15, 1945, that is, this photo was taken 7 months after the operation in Normandy. It shows the actual disembarkation of nurses, only in a completely different place in France. In this case, their outfits are more justified, because the girls do not go to the front line, but to a fairly safe zone.

Unperturbed Londoners Reading in a Library Bombed by the Germans (1940)

Another wartime photograph shows us a truly English calm: the library is destroyed, but life goes on. This is an illustration of the famous call circulated in the UK since the beginning of the war: Keep Calm and Carry On. In fact, the popular photo was indeed such an illustration made especially for the press. After the terrible bombing of London in 1940, the government tried to show the British that, despite the destruction, everything in the state was under control. The pictures were approved by the Ministry of Information and were then released in the form of postcards. The photos were taken not at all in a public library, as they usually write, but in the bombed-out Holland estate in central London.

The girl miraculously crossed the border between East and West Berlin (1955)

This Cold War photo is amazing: a girl miraculously crossed the cherished line and fell exhausted, and the border guards of the two parts of the divided country argue about what happened. Typically, a frame is accompanied by captions like "A photo worth a thousand words." The picture was allegedly taken before the construction of the Berlin Wall, when it was still possible to escape from the GDR to the FRG. Unfortunately, the bright photo is a real fake. This is again a frame from the film, which, however, demonstrates just such a situation, but we see the actors in the photo. According to the plot of the motion picture, the girl runs from East Berlin after her beloved. This little-known Italian film is called Zone East, Zone West, and the girl on her knees is actress Nana Austen. Despite the fact that the film masterpiece was forgotten, one shot from it was still able to touch the souls of people.

Today, with the abundance of information, it sometimes becomes more difficult to separate the "wheat from the chaff". So, for example, Popular "historical" texts about the life of women in Russia are also actually fakes