Do you trust what you see?
From Victorian “Photoshop” to Deepfake Satellite Images
What is a picture, really? A record of what has been—or a polished representation of what we wish it were? We peer into these windows, believing we know the world, trusting that what we see is true. But perhaps it’s never so simple. Even the earliest photographs are acts of choice: selecting what to show, what to hide… sometimes even what to invent.
Let’s first take a trip to the Victorian era. Picture a lady sitting in the plush parlour of a well-to-do home. The air is thick with the scent of lavender and polished mahogany. The walls are lined with heavy drapes in rich velvets and damasks. A fireplace crackles in the corner, casting a soft glow over an intricately carved chair where she sits. The floor is covered with a Persian rug, its deep reds and blues mingling with the golden light from a nearby lamp. And there, in the centre of it all, is a new contraption—a camera, its large, imposing lens ready to capture her moment. It’s the late 1800s, and photography is all the rage. For the first time, a moment can be seized and frozen. And yet…what happens when what is seen by the camera collides with what we want to see?
Victorian women cared about appearances. Just like us. But unlike today, they had no instant fixes, no digital brushes, no Instagram filters. Instead, they relied on clever in-camera techniques: tightly laced corsets to shape their figures, subtle shifts in posture to accentuate curves, and careful manipulation of light and shadow to present the most flattering view.
Yet the real magic lived in the darkroom. Long before Photoshop and social media, photographers—like painters before them—could rewrite what the eye had seen after the shutter clicked. A subtle brushstroke could make a waist smaller, a curve more voluptuous, or a silhouette completely reshaped. This wasn’t simple flattery; it was reality, quietly revised. And suddenly, the image became something more than a simple record—just as much about fantasy as it was about reality.
Let’s jump now 135 years into the future. We are no longer in a plush Victorian parlour, but at a sleek, modern desk, washed in the cool blue glow of a computer screen. You sit there, eyes fixed on an image captured by a satellite far above the Earth. The picture is sharp, precise, pristine—every ridge, river, and road rendered with startling clarity. Untouched by human hands… or is it?
At first glance, the image feels authoritative. There is a comfort in its distance, in the sense that nothing so far removed could be personal or biased. From this height, the world seems orderly, measurable, resolved. And most of the time, that quiet trust feels justified.
But not always.
A satellite image is more than a snapshot of the Earth—it carries a story. And like any story, it can be rewritten. Through deepfakes, AI-generated scenes, and algorithmic alterations, images can now be reshaped quietly, almost invisibly. Look closer… much closer. A military base emerges where none exists. A crumbling road looks freshly paved. A cleared forest appears lush and verdant. The changes may be minuscule—a few pixels here, a faint contour there—but their consequences are anything but.
Now imagine that image appearing on a news broadcast, in a briefing, in a report. What happens next? Once media lends the image its weight and authority, it no longer matters whether the image is real or fabricated. Once it’s out there, once it’s shared, once it’s accepted as truth by those who see it, it takes on a life of its own. The picture becomes evidence. The image becomes fact.
And the audience is no longer only human. Machines absorb these images too—trusting them, learning from them, acting on them. They follow patterns they cannot question, executing decisions at speeds we cannot match.
The effects rapidly ripple outward. Governments tilt policies, solidify claims, hesitate over alliances. Relief workers dispatch drones to disaster zones, trusting every hill and river is exactly as it appears. A commuter follows a map assuming the streets below exist exactly as shown. Ordinary or extraordinary, mundane or critical, decisions unfold—each leaning on the implicit belief that the picture is true.
Perhaps the most unsettling part is how rarely we pause to question it. We gaze at satellite images with awe, with trust, believing that a lens so high above, so far removed from daily life, must be pure—objective, unbiased. But as we’ve already seen, even the purest of lenses can be warped.
Let’s take one last trip together. We are now on Morel’s island. Mind you, you’ll never set foot here; it exists only in Adolfo Bioy Casares’ imagination. The sun scorches white sands, cliffs rise steep and verdant, waves lap rhythmically at the shore. In the central square, Faustine moves with a grace rehearsed to perfection. Around her, others walk, talk, laugh, as if life itself flows here. Every shadow, every ripple, every swaying palm is trapped, endlessly replayed. Uncanny. Hypnotic. Yet entirely unreal. A meticulously repeated illusion—an image locked forever in its own loop.
And what do we recognize in this vision? Morel’s island is but an echo of an ancient impulse—the same impulse we see in real images: a desire to shape life through imagery. From the darkrooms after the first camera shutter to today’s algorithms, humans have entered into dialogue with reality through images. Humans have used images not just to mirror the world, but to mold it. A brush here, a shadow there, a line of code today—it hardly matters. Techniques change, but the longing is timeless: to shape appearances, guide perception… and, ultimately, exert control over reality. What feels new today is not the intent, but the scale—the speed, reach, and authority images now carry. We are not in uncharted territory so much as following well-worn paths, armed with far more powerful instruments.
And yet, despite this long history, we still tend to trust what we see: a picture, a snapshot of the world, as if it could tell us something unambiguously true. But images, as we’ve seen, are never just records of reality. In an age surrounded by images, that matters more than ever. Every image carries choices: what to show, what to hide, what to leave unsaid. So when we look—at a portrait, a photograph, a satellite scan—are we seeing the world as it is, or a carefully constructed illusion?
Perhaps every image is more akin to a distorted mirror than a clear window. Each image carries both a warning and an invitation: a caution against blindly trusting what we see… and a nudge to look deeper. To study an image is to pause, to linger, to question. So the next time you look, ask yourself: What’s missing? What’s beyond the surface? Because the story of any image is never as simple as what it shows. In that careful attention, we glimpse what lies beneath—the subtleties, the richness the image cannot contain, and the world that stretches quietly beyond its frame. And isn’t that the beauty of it? Every image conceals, every image reveals. Every image asks us to look twice.