AA/FS Photo Comparison - Similarities: What is Wrong With AA Being FS?

[Annie]

I was just commenting on your pics, Bear! Very good detective work!

[AGRBear]

I assume this is a copy of a copy but this one does show the entire photo of FS in Summers and Mangold book called The File on the Tsar.


Enlarged the upper part of the same photo.

Note the two white patches in the hair in two photos above.  Are these patches sunlight, leaves or hair pins?


 I'm not sure if this shows the white spots what I'm seeing in the ones  above.  What do some of you think?

AGRBear

[Val289]

Bear - thanks for posting the pictures.  For what it's worth - I cannot make out the two white spots in the very last picture that you've posted.    I certainly see them in the first two pictures, as far as what those white spots might be - I have no clue.   Perhaps they are patches of sunlight.  Would women of that time period wear hair pins at the front of their hair (I mean, they seem pretty large) ? - perhaps I am thinking more of hat pins - or pins that would have been worn at the back of their heads - near where one would have a bun ??

[Lanie]

In many older photos there are spots like that.  It just seems to happen.  Perhaps just age.

[jaa]

The right dot has been interpreted as a highlight in the retouched photo. The left dot could be anything, including a piece of lint on the offset plate when the book was printed.

It was nice of you to explain to Helen and others about  copyrights laws.

Actually I was shocked to see a post about pirating a television show on this forum. This is just as illegal as pirating software.

But, it does not matter if the photograph is retouched, or if it was a copy of a copy of a copy the measurements are still the same when all points are blown up to the same size. And the measurements are what this test was about.

An extensively retouched photo has the potential to change those dimensions; all it takes is a slip of a 000 sable, blown up. That's why an expert would want to work from an original or a good first- or second-generation copy of an original.

And when the age progression photographs of OTMA and Alexei, as well as AA, are done, will  there be such questions too? Oy vey, I don't think I want to put the artist through that!

Your artist should do fine if she has training in forensic anthropology. It would be great if she would answer questions. What these artist-scientists do is really interesting.

I have seen both the untouched and retouched photos side-by-side, and its evident that the one is heavily corrected with "china white," which looks thick and heavy, like white-out.

Penny, this is trivia, but since I don't know what details a historian would be interested in, "China white" probably refers to "Chinese White," a watercolor zinc white first marketed by Winsor & Newton in 1834. (Source for this is Ralph Mayer's "Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques.") Zinc whites do not have a high degree of opacity, unlike titanium and lead whites. That lack of opacity may account for the thickness of the paint; more layers were needed to create highlights.

I am pretty sure that copies of the original are just as good as the copying itself -- I have seen bad copies of original photos and good ones, too.  But I don't know if the same can be said of copies of copies of copies -- I don't know if quality fades over the process of copying and re-copying.

In photography this is called "generational loss" or "generational degradation." It refers to the image degradation (loss of detail and range of values) that comes from copying copies. Digital photography, which uses pixels instead of film grain to create images, theoretically has no generational loss.

[AGRBear]

Does anyone know the size of the original photographs?

The one that Helen had appears to show more detail in the hair and the white spots are different as if scattered [not lint from plate].


AGRBear

[AGRBear]

One of Annie's post had these photographs:

Also, Michael, here is a collage Lisa posted before you got here. The only known pic of FS was in the middle, the others are all AA.



Even though there are cries the pic has been retouched, it does not change its basic bone structure or the placings of the features. Here, compare the spacing of the eyes, and the shape of the chin to AN (left) and AA (right) Also notice AA had a much larger mouth and thicker lips (which is why I think she usually bit them in some photos)

Again, the white spots in FS's hair is different, again.

Here it does look more like a hat pin.  I wonder if the original has FS with one of those flat Mary Poppin's kind-of hat on her head which has been changed into her hair.....  Ahhh, no.  Probably not.

AGRBear

[Penny_Wilson]

Penny, this is trivia, but since I don't know what details a historian would be interested in, "China white" probably refers to "Chinese White," a watercolor zinc white first marketed by Winsor & Newton in 1834. (Source for this is Ralph Mayer's "Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques.") Zinc whites do not have a high degree of opacity, unlike titanium and lead whites. That lack of opacity may account for the thickness of the paint; more layers were needed to create highlights.

Thanks, jaa!  This must be it -- I think I have heard "china white" called "zinc white" in connection with this retouched photo...

In photography this is called "generational loss" or "generational degradation." It refers to the image degradation (loss of detail and range of values) that comes from copying copies.

Over what sort of span does generational loss become significant for this sort of photo-matching?

And do you know how shadows are removed?  I'm not certain that I have phrased that question correctly, but  I am thinking of photos, where the eyes are shadowed  -- either by the sockets or by the nose --  how would the expert "see" through the shadowing to the actual dimensions of the eyes?

[AGRBear]

From a weekend artist point of view, I can explain that anything can be done with a photograph.

A little shade, a little highlight and the nose can be a little broader or it can become narrower...  Corners of the eye can be lenghten or shorten.

Remember, we're talking about an old photograph.  Unlike the new digital cameras, with which anything can be  changed with software programs,  the older photgraph with a copy would be done with paint and brush then a new photo would have been taken.  A technic lost these days because no one is colorizing the black and whites for a living because back then there wasn't color photographs.

Over on another thread several people are doing marvelous coloring of old photographs with software.

AGRBear

PS  Forgot to say, the lost of detail by copying varies.  It depends upon the person doing the copying.  If the person was a real professional and good at his/her work, then very little is lost.  After over a hundred years and a lot of copying through various means, who knows what was lost.  The photographs above show the differences of one that was probably a better copy than some of the others.

PS "China white" or "zinc" white is a "bright" white and would not have been used by a pro.  Very few things in real life or "bright" white accept highlights and that usually has some kind of color mix.

PSS  Forgot to comment on how one would tell what was changed.  You could tell only if a person showed you the copy upon which the paint was placed.  Once a photo is taken, the same patterns of a photo would reappear and the actual brush strokes would be gone.  This is why seeing the originals is so important before we can take the tv series overlays as being proof.

[AGRBear]

I just recalled.  Someone mentioned that AA had a widows peak and had pulled out thoses hairs to make herself look more like GD Anastasia.  Is this true?  If so, what is the source, please?

AGRBear

[AGRBear]

Note, the second photo down shows one white spot in FS's hair.

The third one down shows her wearing earrings and that FS had piereced ears.

Five and six are AA.

New Note - 28 March 2005:  The first photo may be a direct or an early copy of the untouched photograph.

I just found this FS photo which is supposedly the original version - before it was manipulated (next to it are the two "re-touched" versions):


Un-retouched version of the photo^^

The first re-touched version doesn't look that different to me, only the features are more clear. It doesn't really look as much as it was re-touched as an attempt to make the photo more clear, this was probably the purpose for it. The second picture just looks like a bad artist's rendition, and is neither here nor there...

There are certain photos of AA, not all, that bear a striking resemblance to this FS photo (unre-touched). What do you think?



Fraziska Schankowzska (unre-touched photo)                      Anna Anderson                                                       Anna Anderson

To be honest, even based on these three photos alone , I would say that there is a really good chance that this is one and the same person - I mean the resemblance is really uncanny here!

Last two [five and six] are AA.

AGRBear

[AGRBear]

And, speaking of photographs, does anyone know of the original photo which the Berlin police took of AA?

I've pulled the following over from our locked thread and it tells you what I posted earlier:

----
When looking for one thing, I find something else.  
 
Anastasia, The Riddle of Anna Anderson by Kurth p. 6:
 
"After another two months...the doctors at Dalldorf summoned the Berlin police...."
 
"Her picture and prints were sent out to Stuttgart, Brunswick, Hamburg, Munich, Dresden-- to all the corners of the Western Republic..."
 
"The records of all the Berlin's hospitals and madhouses were dutifully checked....."
 
p. 7
"...she was asked...if she were another Maria, surnamed Wachowiak, who had disappeared recently from the cityy of Posen."
 
The Berlin police did take her fingerprints,  did they collected the  fingerprints of people in asylums and so had FS's already in the system.  If they had, then their prints didn't match and that's evidence outside of DNA.
 
And who is this Maria Wachowiak?   From Posen....  
 
Forgotten what I was looking for in the first place.  Oh yes, the magazines.... Still looking.
----
 
AGRBear

[jeremygaleaz]

An extensively retouched photo has the potential to change those dimensions; all it takes is a slip of a 000 sable, blown up. That's why an expert would want to work from an original or a good first- or second-generation copy of an original.

What makes you think the artist didn't take that into consideration?

Your artist should do fine if she has training in forensic anthropology. It would be great if she would answer questions. What these artist-scientists do is really interesting.[/quote]

He does, but, (this isn't directed at you, JAA as I hardly know your views on the subject at all) so many people are in deep, deep denial over the likelyhood that AA and FS were the same person, I just don't want to see the guy attacked. I'll save it all for any film or book work I'll do in the future. He's a nice guy and I don't want to put him through that. However, the choice is his.    

[AGRBear]

No one is attacking anyone.

We're talking about "original" photographs.  

The fellow on the tv series worked with whatever photographs he was given.  And, more than likely,  he  probably isn't into the Romanov like many of us on the forum and  he probably assumed he had the originals.

So, this is why I'm asking about the originals.

When satisfied we have the originals then we can take the next step and agree that the  images uses were the images which should have been used.  Following this is the question of the overlay and the process used.  

Again, this to me seems like a simple request and one that should be made in this research.


AGRBear

[Elisabeth]

Even if the FS photo was retouched way back when, I have difficulty believing that even the most skillful artist could make FS look so much like AA, unless there was a strong underlying resemblance to begin with. I'm wondering, do all of us admit that there IS a resemblance? Or are some of you saying, there's no resemblance, even though the photo was retouched to make FS look like AA?

It seems to me that the retouching was either successful or it wasn't, but you can't have it both ways!

For that matter, how do we know that some of the AA photos were not retouched to make AA look more like AN? If we're going to start nitpicking to this extent, worrying about not just retouching but also about copies of copies of copies, their precise age and so on, we might as well go all the way...