Chinese officials loom large in doctored photo
A screen shot of the digitally manipulated image that went viral in China, depicting local officials visiting with an improbably small elderly woman. Photo: New York Times
Efforts to promote a visit by local government officials to an elderly pensioner in the eastern province of Anhui took an awkward turn after a poorly doctored photo spread rapidly on Chinese websites. By Wednesday, hours after it had begun to go viral, the photo had landed on the front page of The Beijing News.
The image shows four men, including Wang Jun, deputy mayor of the city of Ningguo, and Yu Anlin, head of Ningguo's civil affairs bureau, visiting an elderly woman who is holding a red envelope typically used to present a gift of money.
The woman is identified as 103-year-old Cheng Yanchun. In life, Cheng is a small woman, but in the photo manipulation she appears improbably tiny beneath the giant, beaming men.
The doctored image seems to have been an effort to get all the visitors together with her in one photo, but the surreal proportions triggered online ridicule and caused it to travel far beyond the government website that first posted it. The state-run China News Service reported that the image was available on the website of the Ningguo city civil affairs bureau Tuesday evening, but when contacted by phone, a representative of the bureau denied any knowledge of the photo and then hung up.
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A call to the bureau on Wednesday morning rang unanswered.
Doctored images of officials making inspection visits have become a source of popular mockery in China, particularly after the discovery of one distinctive image that showed a group of functionaries hovering over a road in Sichuan. In some cases, officials have been edited into obscene images for the purpose of blackmail.
The online explosion of the Ningguo officials' image appears to be connected to a local grievance.
According to a report on the website of People's Daily, a volunteer who had wanted to raise money for three uremia patients was stopped by the civil affairs bureau, who said it was unfair to single out three beneficiaries when Ningguo had 2000 needy uremia patients.
Angered by that decision, a user of the Sina Weibo microblog found the photo online and reposted it, said a story in the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily. The image has disappeared from the government website, but it survives online, larger than life.
The original Weibo message has been re-posted nearly 30,000 times.
In March this year, North Korea was caught out doctoring a photograph to double the number of hovercraft in a military exercise. The picture showed vessels with the same give-away shine on the front, moving through the water at an identical angle and throwing up spray that had been clumsily altered.
An Iranian state news agency released a doctored image of a radar-dodging jet flying above snow-capped mountains in February. The picture was immediately suspected to be fake, with the lighting on the plane and its position similar to its appearance in pictures on the ground in Tehran at the unveiling earlier in the month, at which aviation experts questioned whether it could actually fly.
In 2011 and 2012, China was at the centre of Photoshop furores after publishing photos showing Chinese officials seemingly walking on air while inspecting new parks and roads.
Merilyn Fairskye, an associate professor of photomedia at Sydney College of the Arts, said at the time: "It would fail photoshop 101."
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/...m-large-in-doctored-photo-20131031-2wjl4.html
A screen shot of the digitally manipulated image that went viral in China, depicting local officials visiting with an improbably small elderly woman. Photo: New York Times
Efforts to promote a visit by local government officials to an elderly pensioner in the eastern province of Anhui took an awkward turn after a poorly doctored photo spread rapidly on Chinese websites. By Wednesday, hours after it had begun to go viral, the photo had landed on the front page of The Beijing News.
The image shows four men, including Wang Jun, deputy mayor of the city of Ningguo, and Yu Anlin, head of Ningguo's civil affairs bureau, visiting an elderly woman who is holding a red envelope typically used to present a gift of money.
The woman is identified as 103-year-old Cheng Yanchun. In life, Cheng is a small woman, but in the photo manipulation she appears improbably tiny beneath the giant, beaming men.
The doctored image seems to have been an effort to get all the visitors together with her in one photo, but the surreal proportions triggered online ridicule and caused it to travel far beyond the government website that first posted it. The state-run China News Service reported that the image was available on the website of the Ningguo city civil affairs bureau Tuesday evening, but when contacted by phone, a representative of the bureau denied any knowledge of the photo and then hung up.
Advertisement
A call to the bureau on Wednesday morning rang unanswered.
Doctored images of officials making inspection visits have become a source of popular mockery in China, particularly after the discovery of one distinctive image that showed a group of functionaries hovering over a road in Sichuan. In some cases, officials have been edited into obscene images for the purpose of blackmail.
The online explosion of the Ningguo officials' image appears to be connected to a local grievance.
According to a report on the website of People's Daily, a volunteer who had wanted to raise money for three uremia patients was stopped by the civil affairs bureau, who said it was unfair to single out three beneficiaries when Ningguo had 2000 needy uremia patients.
Angered by that decision, a user of the Sina Weibo microblog found the photo online and reposted it, said a story in the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily. The image has disappeared from the government website, but it survives online, larger than life.
The original Weibo message has been re-posted nearly 30,000 times.
In March this year, North Korea was caught out doctoring a photograph to double the number of hovercraft in a military exercise. The picture showed vessels with the same give-away shine on the front, moving through the water at an identical angle and throwing up spray that had been clumsily altered.
An Iranian state news agency released a doctored image of a radar-dodging jet flying above snow-capped mountains in February. The picture was immediately suspected to be fake, with the lighting on the plane and its position similar to its appearance in pictures on the ground in Tehran at the unveiling earlier in the month, at which aviation experts questioned whether it could actually fly.
In 2011 and 2012, China was at the centre of Photoshop furores after publishing photos showing Chinese officials seemingly walking on air while inspecting new parks and roads.
Merilyn Fairskye, an associate professor of photomedia at Sydney College of the Arts, said at the time: "It would fail photoshop 101."
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/...m-large-in-doctored-photo-20131031-2wjl4.html
