Today we’ve got Photoshop. In 1880, we didn’t. But we still had this.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec as Artist and Model: 1892 by Maurice Guibert. Gelatin silver print.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art  is hosting an exhibition of the original photo shoppers, a collective of artists whose conceptual work beyond the shutter pushed photography into the medium it is today. Faking It: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop opens on Oct. 11, right on the heels of another of the Met’s photography exhibitions, After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography in the Digital Age, which opens on Sept. 25.

Here’s more from Daily Mail Reporter:

… the images were altered using a variety of techniques, including multiple exposure (taking two or more pictures on a single negative), combination printing (producing a single print from elements of two or more negatives), photomontage, overpainting, and retouching on the negative or print.

Whether manipulated to compensate for technical limitations, for explicitly political or ideological ends, to amuse or astonish, or to depict events that never occurred, the meaning and content of each image in the exhibition has been significantly transformed or ‘faked’.

Collectively, the pictures offer a provocative new perspective on the history of photography.

A Powerful Collision: Unknown Artist, German School 1910s. Gelatin silver print.