Seeing is unbelieving

"Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop" , now on view at the National Gallery of Art, is an engaging peek at messing around with photos from the 1840s through the 1980s. It is an exhibit that demands to be seen in person to be fully appreciated. Most of the images are original, unfiltered by the obscuring gauze of reproduction, which many photographers relied on to hide the deception.