Art Scandal and Backyard Photographs

[Herbert Blenner]

During the late forties criminals lithographically imprinted authentic signatures of artists on fake reproductions of their works. At first the forgers were successful. The imprinted signatures fooled the experts for years. Traditionally experts identified authentic signatures by comparison of the subject signature with accepted signatures. They declared a subject signature authentic upon recognizing essential similarities. By the early fifties, however, the experts noticed some signatures of an artist on different high-priced paintings were identical. This discovery triggered a scandal.

Photographs bear the signatures of their camera. They associate a photograph with a camera by comparing camera signatures on test negatives with the signatures imprinted on photographs. When photographs have identical camera signatures we know they are fakes.

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