{{Short description|Method of photo manipulation}} [[File:Peaches & Daddy Browning Composograph 1.gif|thumb|N.Y. Evening Graphic composograph illustrating article exploiting the Peaches & "Daddy" Browning scandal of 1926.]]'''Composograph''' refers to a forerunner method of photo manipulation and is a retouched photographic collage popularized by publisher and physical culture advocate Bernarr Macfadden in his ''New York Evening Graphic'' in 1924.
The ''Graphic'' was dubbed "The ''Porno-Graphic''" by critics of the time<ref name="hunt">Hunt, William R. ''Body Love: The Amazing Career of Bernarr Macfadden''. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989: 135.</ref> and has been called "one of the low points in the history of American journalism".<ref name="yagoda">Yagoda, Ben. "The True Story of Bernarr Macfadden." ''American Heritage'' 33.1 (December 1981).</ref> Exploitative and mendacious, in its short life (it closed operations in 1932) the ''Graphic'' defined "tabloid journalism" and launched the careers of Ed Sullivan and Walter Winchell, who developed the modern gossip column there. Film director Sam Fuller worked for the ''Evening Graphic'' as a crime reporter.
"Composographic" images were literally cut and pasted together using images of the heads or faces of current celebrities, glued onto staged images created in Macfadden's in-house studio, often using newspaper staffers as body doubles. Composite photographs, or photomontages, had been used in the nineteenth century by such photographers as William Notman to capture indoor scenes that would not have been otherwise possible before the flashbulb was developed.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Mr. Notman's Incredible Successors |journal=Maclean's Magazine |date=11 May 1957 |page=12 |url=https://archive.macleans.ca/search?QueryTerm=Notman%27s+Incredible+Successors&DocType=All&sort= |accessdate=16 October 2018}}</ref>
Macfadden used them to represent events that were inconvenient to photograph, particularly with the equipment of the day: private bedrooms and bathtubs, Rudolph Valentino's unsuccessful surgery, Valentino's funeral, and notably on March 17, 1927, a full-page image of Valentino meeting Enrico Caruso in heaven. One early faked photograph—that of Alice Jones Rhinelander baring her breast in court (part of the Kip Rhinelander divorce trial)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/magazine/rhinelander-trial-interracial-marriage.html |title=A Revelation Tore Apart Her Fairy-Tale Marriage, and Shocked the Nation }}NYTimes, 17 Dec, 2025; The caption reads, "Because the press was barred from witnessing the “color examination,” The New York Evening Graphic newspaper rendered it in what it called a composograph, superimposing an image of a hired actress over existing photos of other courtroom figures."</ref>—is said to have boosted the Graphic's circulation by 100,000 copies.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,812095,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110131113710/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,812095,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 31, 2011|title=The Press: Pastepot Wonder|date=Feb 27, 1950|magazine=Time|accessdate=24 March 2011}}</ref>
Apart from their sensational subject matter, composographs have relevance as a historical reference point in the current debate over staged and doctored news photos. Some of the ''Graphic'' composographs have an unforgettable eerie visual impact. In a 1997 academic paper called "Staged, faked and mostly naked: Photographic innovations at the Evening Graphic, 1924–1932"<ref>[http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9709c&L=aejmc&T=0&F=&S=&P=1494 AEJMC Archives - September 1997, week 3 (#11)]</ref> and a shorter online essay,<ref>{{cite web|title=The Evening Graphic's Tabloid Reality |author=Bob Stepno |date=1997-07-15 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120204033753/http://www.unc.edu/~rbstepno/graphic/ |archivedate=2012-02-04 |url=http://www.unc.edu/~rbstepno/graphic/}}</ref> Radford University professor Bob Stepno points out that the ''Graphic'' was published before improvements in photojournalism technology and standards that made possible the photorealism of Magnum Photos, Black Star and others during World War II.
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== *[https://web.archive.org/web/20000510064915/http://www.pbs.org/ktca/americanphotography/features/popups/rhinelander.html The Composograph of Alice Rhinelander]
Category:Photographic techniques