This photograph appears on the Facebook/Edge of Wonder page, as posted on Feb 14, 2018. Though there may be a previous post “source” – this post alone has almost 15,000 shares and over 1,500 likes at the moment As of this writing, it constitutes as “viral” and deserves a mention here.
The reason is that the photograph is a fairly demonstrable fake. But let that not stop the masses from “sharing” it with the world. Why? Well, it has to be real despite evidence to the contrary. Why? Well, the post says it’s real. So if you read it on the internet, it has to be true!
Here is the text of the original post:
It happened in Russia.
They say this is not fake, what do you think？
cr. Web
But don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Tests
The analysis
By doing a slight cropping on the image, and then performing a reverse image search, multiple matches with an identical “appearance” are discovered.
The first to be discovered, believed to be the source, is a graphite sketch that appears in moziru and in a long list of artworks using “graphite” as a medium.
Second, there is information about a music album in Spanish, titled “Accidents – El Fantasma en mi” that has the following cover art:
Although there are slight variations between the two examples found on Google, the image in question, from an apparition in Russia, is clearly an exact copy of the first example. Here is an overlay showing the image in question, in front of the first drawing in graphite.
Both layers are overlaid, with different color balances to differentiate them.
The prankster did skew the original artwork (they changed the aspect ratio), but it only took a few seconds to do the same thing in Photoshop, and see that the finger placement, body, etc. they are a perfect/identical match.
