Authentic or Faked Images

Revised 5/31/25 Added one image

In this posting we deal with images for which we have no explicit evidence of authenticity (or fakery) such as the existence of another version.  However, most are rich with clues that point one way or the other.  This is what I consider challenging.

A few comments are in order to guide or forensic inquires. When attempting to date an image, the presence of women – particularly clothed women – in the frame is very helpful.  Each of the decades that span the period of interest had distinctive hairdos and clothes styles.  Male hairstyles and clothing can also be telling as well.  In the interest of full disclosure, as a retired gentleman of a certain age, my knowledge of these matters springs from the well of memory.

We’ll start with some posed shots.

This young man on the top tier of the champion’s platform is very much in the moment. He’s looking directly into the camera that is commemorating his triumph, keeping full frontal while giving scant attention to the senior gentleman who is shaking his hand. 

The well-dressed lady in the background is a wealth of information.  Despite the summer heat, she is wearing a long-skirted summer dress.  The skirt length is a hallmark of the 1950’s (skirts were shorter both in the 1940’s and the ‘60’s).  Indeed, her short hairdo and close-fitting necklace are also typical of the fashion of the time.  It rather looks like she took her ensemble from June Cleaver’s (yeah, google that) closet.  She is also wearing a hang tag badge which suggests that she is in some sort of responsible charge with regard to the proceedings.

But …

Unfortunately, this image was Photoshopped on Wednesday, October 14, 2010 on a McIntosh computer.  The dirtbag that perpetrated this fraud left metadata in the image file.

This fine-looking young man is displaying some impressive development.  Unfortunately, not all of it is his.  The sexual appliance seems to have been borrowed from a gentleman of African descent.  That is not just because of its prodigious size (which can be manipulated – no pun intended – on ‘shopping software), but because the pubic hair is in tight pin curls rather than the flowing curly thatch that a Euro-descendant displays.  He was apparently deprived of the trunks that the tan line on his thighs indicates he was wearing (props to the ‘shopper who made sure the shadow of his new penis showed on his thigh).  Actually, he seems to have a farmer’s tan, with his head, neck and lower legs colored.  He was apparently in the habit of wearing V-neck tops. 

A correspondent advised me that he had seen the original, color version of this photo in which the boy was wearing a blue swim suit.  He was not able to retrieve that image, though.

The clues in this picture are scant.  As mentioned in the greyscale discussion, this is an example of an image has been closely cropped, probably eliminating contextual details.  We can only say that they are outdoors and that some swimming has taken place (based on their wet appearance).  These could be a couple of competitors at a club event or this may be one of those “pageant” (that is, line-up) shots that old nudist magazines were fond of.  However, I firmly believe that this image was not altered.

Having said that, this is almost certainly from the right period and something organized is happening.  I’ll take a neutral stance on this one.

This image is from the yearbook of a college in Ontario.  As it happens, I also located the yearbook page from which this was lifted. It is one of five frames depicting anecdotal athletic activities.  It will be included in a yearbook posting.

The takeaway is that this is a yearbook picture – nudes in a yearbook.  Most people would say “no way”. But there are a few mentions in the blogs that nude swimmers did sometimes make it into the yearbook.  Note that the young men are discretely photographed, showing only buttocks.  This is consistent with the LIFE practice cited in an earlier posting as acceptable for general consumption. 

I vote this one genuine.

So far, we’ve been looking at posed shots with mixed conclusions as to their authenticity. We’ll now move onto some candid shots. 

It should be noted that some blog correspondents have insisted that no formal, official  photos were taken of nude swimmers.  The implication is that casual pictures by family and friends are the most likely source of authentic nudes.  One correspondent asserted that in his Y, photos of nude swimmers were hung in the halls and stairwell off the pool in an area not frequented by the general public.

Still, the general stipulation against routine nude photography calls into question team pictures where the participants are shown nude.  We have dealt with some of these in the posting titled “The Bad.”   There will be more later.

These rather mature looking guys are being recognized for their aquatic achievements.  Their hairdos scream1970’s but the venue they are standing in must have been quiet.  The seats appear nearly empty.

The man bestowing the medals and the close on-lookers are as naked as the competitors, suggesting a nudist event.  That does not account for the guy in the coat and tie and the anomaly of the photographer who is bare chested but wearing jeans. To each his own.

This is probably within the period of interest and very likely unaltered. I’m declaring this authentic.

This is a very informative shot that touches on multiple topics.  It is all about the female spectators in the background visible between the two swimmers. They seem to be giving the naked guys some pretty intense scrutiny.

The women themselves are tell-tale with their long skirts and short hairdos.  This looks like the 1950’s (check the box).  The implication here is that guys competed nude in the presence of a mixed gender audience (although in this case the only three spectators visible are females).  The question remains whether this guy was indeed naked or has been ‘shopped into nakedness.  Still, he seems to be holding the ladies’ attention for some compelling reason – like nudity.

All in all, I’m at least 75% confident that this image is genuine.

Nothing says victory like dunking the coach.  This is a very good candidate for the designation of “genuine.”  All of the competitors are nude and this seems to be school or club affiliated, given the decorated warm-up jacket on the one guy.  The tall guy with the glasses seems older and mustachioed.  Can’t tell what his deal is.  Assistant coach?

Absent any evidence of alteration, I have high level of confidence in this photo.

This image is in a different class from the previous two.  Like the others it is an indoor flash shot, but it is crystal clear.  I suspect this is the work of a professional.  There is some context, but nothing definitive.  Judging from the sign on the wall, this could be a “wet area” (shower, steam/sauna, pool access, etc.) of a club. The problem becomes “what is it a picture of?”  Is this a star competitor complying with a request to strike a pose or a professional beefcake shot for some publication or other?  It certainly is not a casual candid.

The subject appears on the older side (could be high school senior, but more likely college age).  His hair is perfect and his body is specimen grade with a smooth chest. The coy genital display is a nice touch.  I think this guy is a paid model.

I think this image has no bearing on our present study.

The caption on this one is almost certainly bogus.  There is a clash of elements that argue against this being a high school event in the period we’re discussing.  As mentioned before, the swim cap and goggles suggest that this is from a time just at the end of our era at best.  It is more likely from the 1980’s or later. Then it gets interesting.  There is a coat of arms on the wall around the corner from our foreground swimmer that clearly shows the English word “Prosperity.”  However, the seated woman with her back to the scene is wearing a T-shirt with Cyrillic lettering on it. A correspondent advised that the partially visible word is likely Bulgarian for “referee.”

I think we’re eavesdropping on a Euro nudist event of fairly recent vintage that has been decolorized.  This was confirmed by the metadata associated with this file.  It was “modified” by an editing software app on September 20, 2009.

These two low-res (therefore suspicious) photos seem to have been taken minutes apart.  The vintage looks about right with high school aged boys competing in goggles and nothing else.  But what’s going on in the background?

This is already busted when you read the sign on the left above the seated girl’s head in the first picture.  It lists council members with what are apparently year dates in parentheses beside them (Nichole (’98), Laura (’02)).  But it gets really weird when you look at the sign with the same girl sitting in the same spot below the sign in the second picture.  The letters are now indistinct except for the heading BLUE SPONSORS but there are several more lines of text above and below the heading compared with the first image.

While I can’t rationalize all of the discrepancies (Including the person in the flowing robes in the background of the second photo), the conclusion is pretty clear: doctored images. 

This good-looking young man has climbed onto the deck after his race and stepped into the lens of an admirer as he is in the process of accepting a towel from someone standing behind him.  This image has enough context to be tantalizing, but not enough to be definitive.  The clothed people in the background have been cropped too closely to provide information.  Too, the resolution is not conducive to good analysis.  Then there is the matter of the goggles, which would tend to set it in the latter end of our time period.

I accept that this is a record of a nude swimming event because the competitor climbing out of the pool behind him is also nude.  Beyond that, I can’t say.  I’m going to abstain from voting on this one.

I could study this image for a week.  While I usually whine about the lack of context, this is context overload.  These guys look like high school is behind them.  They are more mature competitors who are bored by the necessity of recording their achievements on film.  They live for the sport.

Okay, enough fantasy.

This image was modified by Photoshop on September 25, 2014 by someone using a McIntosh.  Likely the same guy as faked image 1.  In the interest of full disclosure, this one had me fooled before I got the metadata.

This scene of disparate activity by various kinds of figures makes you wonder what is going on.  As it turns out, this image was faked by someone using Photoshop on a MacIntosh on March 3, 2012. Sound familiar?

My gut says this was altered, mostly because this is the type of shot that tempts the fakers.  It is similar in content to faked image 17 of my posting titled “The Bad.” If the robed guy in the middle is the coach, this is consistent with other college images I’ve seen. Was it typical for a coach to be naked and just throw on a robe?  An oddity is that he is the one wearing the medal.

Beyond the nude/faked question, this is an interesting image.  The product-laden hairdos of the swimmers say that this is the 1950’s.  It might be earlier.

This is quite a facility with multiple pools and a really tall diving platform. You have to go up two decks to reach the ladder. Seems like you would have time to eat lunch on the way down diving from that height.

Looks like a water polo practice where a team member is broaching the coach with his cap in his hand.  The image is very crisp, which argues for authenticity.  But the aspect I find the most compelling is that the view of the only nude figure is from the rear.  Counterfeiters prefer frontals which allow them to paste on a penis for a more attention-getting scene.

Then there are the quibbles.  The various background items, the apparent modernity of the facility and the coach’s outfit argue for a more recent time period than we are considering. It makes me think that this was a color image that was translated to greyscale to make it seem vintage.  So, if it’s recent, why is this guy wearing his birthday suit?  Did some masterful faker relieve him of his speedo and replace it with some finely rounded buttocks?

I’m pretty well convinced that this is unaltered, but I don’t think it is from our period of interest.

I’m giving this one short shrift since it is obvious that this is a commercial shot of models.  The females are well made up and all of the people seem a little older. The picture is closely cropped on both sides, so I suspect that this was a more inclusive scene. It may have been from some European print advertisement.

I can’t find fault with this one.  The swimmer starting from a low block while at least one naked colleague loiters in the background. He is not wearing any of the accessories that became customary in the latter part of the period.  His haircut is short, suggesting that this image predates the mid-1960’s.  I’m down with this one.

This shot catches the competitors just as they push off.  Unlike the last images, all of them are outfitted with goggles but not caps.  Two naked figures are observing the event but most spectators appear to be males wearing shorts and Tees, furthermore some appear to be females.  The nearest swimmer’s penis is standing up.  This comports with accounts which stated that erections sometimes occurred as swimmers got ready to compete but that that condition quickly faded as the race commenced.

I’m giving this one the seal of approval.

This group is off the wall a split second and maybe decades after the moment captured in the previous image. These guys have bathing caps with logos – in alignment with recent/current practice.  I suspect that this is a greyscaling of a photo from the Euro naturist swimming meets.  I’m disallowing this one.

As noted previously, color photography was widely available during at least part of our timescale.  The resolution of this image suggests to me it was taken on film rather than digital camera.  In that regard, it is similar to image 5.

This photo temps me because the competitors are sans goggles and caps as well as suits.  As also previously mentioned I haven’t come across any definite color fakes.

I’m leaning on the side of “authentic” for this one.

I have several other similar images to be vetted through this process, but I thought we could take a break from this string and return to it in a later post.  My next target is the wide world of team photos.

Metadata

The metadata that has been cited in debunking some of these images is visible using forensic apps that are available on the internet.  Photoshop leaves a very large data footprint that provides a lot of information.  Other apps do little more than give the app name and a few indecipherable numbers.  One other point is that not all altered image files carry metadata.  This data can be stripped out, camouflaging tampering. For example, Facebook routinely removes this data from any files that are posted on it. Conversely, an image carrying metadata is not necessarily altered. It might just be an ID and some arcane stats about the properties of the image.

There is a link to a metadata explanation in Resources under Technical.

Photo Editing

I’ve railed repeatedly about my contempt for actors that post false, misleading material.  I have referred to all photo alteration that transforms the content of an image into something it was not as “Photoshopping.” In truth, that type of fakery is a subset of a larger universe of practice called “photo editing” which can be performed using a variety of software tools are that readily accessible to all. Probably most photo editing is non-deceptive and is used to enhance the presentation of the image.  For instance, I myself have cropped some of the images that are posted here to eliminate frames that were common in old photographic prints. This was for uniformity of presentation. I have also lightened a few images where the contrast was too low to be readily discernible.

The point is that I have noticed images carrying metadata that have probably not been altered in a substantive way.  I’ll point these out as we treat the posts on other pages.

Back to Top