Thanks for all the comments and questions. Conclusion to all this? The car is Alpine based and the picture has more than likely been altered. Won't use the word faked as it was done for a reason. How can this be?
I am not an expert, or even an amateur for that matter, on photography. However, I know a man who is. Marko Dukta. His qualifications are 22 years behind the camera professionally, Masters in fine art specialising in photography. Lectured on the subject. Won awards. On board of photography clubs (need to check). About to embark on a PHD in photography. What he isn't is an expert on photographic forensics, but in this case he does not have to be. Photographic forensics today both by a person and one of the forensic analysis free programs on the web is based on pixel analysis. This does not apply here as the picture was taken in 1962.
Will write this all up fully in the next week or so, but as the picture seems to have had a resurgence of interest all over the web, am posting to get criticism and move things along till there is very little to talk about (can live in hope).
Marko has asked me to say that he has given opinions not facts. I would also say that about my work, except for the car is Alpine based. In other words, re Alpine, if the picture is changed as is being suggested, it could faithfully follow elements of an Alpine and be complete fantasy in other areas.
So why faked and real? How is that an argument that works?
Here is the picture in high res.
Key Marko points:
A) "Personally I think the car has been inserted into the image pre-digitally." "Skilfully done, but there are a number of giveaways".
B) The car seems slightly sharper than everything else. Assuming shot at 1/250 upwards this would freeze most motion. Would expect similar sharpness on van as to car as traffic is rush hour and slow moving.
C) Body language. This is early 1960’s. Britain is just coming out of rationing (well a few years after Marko!). Look at all the other vehicles. They are old styling, traditional, functional, utilitarian and old fashioned. That car is a spaceship compared to the rest of the vehicles present. Look at the people around the scene. They’re not even slightly interested!! The three gentlemen walking up to it haven’t noticed it. The middle gentleman is looking at the photographer, therefore right past the car. The dark haired gentleman moving around the car is looking at the photographer not the car. The two men crossing around it aren’t even glancing at it.
D) Road markings. If you look at the junction markings the light that separates the side road from the main thoroughfare fades towards the left hand side. It looks drawn in.
E) Surface edges. These are the biggest giveaway and are all over this section of the image.
These look like physical additions to the image. Very well done by the standards of the time and admittedly a little bit surprising considering this is a fairly ordinary image.
These are not digital. In analogue days you would have to physically cut out anything you wanted to superimpose and then sand down the paper images with very fine sandpaper before carefully gluing down and re-photographing.
If you look at the following areas you will see a very faint, white, blurry rim around them.
1.The woman with white hat skirt bottom and legs crossing the main road.
2.The right leg of the man in the grey suit in a group of three approaching the car on the opposite pavement.
3.The rear of the woman’s hair, (RHS) at the front of the picture.(not conclusive)
4.Most tellingly the car itself. White lines around the front bumper, under the front chassis and below the rear chassis. These are not reflections and can’t be caused by top lighting. There are others but the car ones are the most pertinent.
5.Also look at the shadow line on the rear side of the car. It looks painted in and doesn’t make sense.
6.If these were created in a digital age it would be really simple to clone these out pixel-by-pixel and you really would have a hard time finding a problem.
7.A really skilled, analogue forger would have painted these white blurs out with photographic dyes. I have seen somebody do this on negatives never mind on a print!!
Questions I specifically asked:
A) Has the image been cropped? Hard to tell overall. The rear of the white van breaks the composition up and if I was deliberately photographing the scene to include the blue car I would make sure that I included the wheels. If the forger had problems with white blur under the tyres where it would be most obvious then the easiest solution is to crop these out completely.
B) Two women in foreground? I think that they are possibly super-imposed. Their edges are very sharp and as mentioned re the white van whose edge was blurred this doesn’t stack up. I think they would be moving faster than the van so they should have some blurred edges as well. Also there is no red reflected in the hubcaps particularly the rear hub. Those are really reflective surfaces and are multi faceted. There should be something? As a photographer I would not have taken the image of the car with the women blocking the view of it. I would tell the car driver to stay where he was until I had a clear shot. People were a lot more polite in those days and it would have taken no time to get a clear shot. You could probably have an assistant to hold people back for a second. People even today are pretty accommodating.
C) Point shadows on car? There are two point shadows on the car. One on the bonnet and one on the rear roof.
I think they are different reflections, as the points would point the same direction otherwise.
If this wasn’t faked the one on the roof would be a reflection of the building behind and to the left of the car. The bonnet one would be a reflection of a building across the street and out of view.
Hard to draw a conclusion on this.
D)
Please see this link (use translate as in German) regarding
Ken Adams and taking photographs of junctions in London to help frame sets and film situations. People have been added to give the pictures context. Could the image be for this reason? Makes me think this image could be a record shot for reference to show scale of car against a modern cityscape in which case all you need is a record and the people in the foreground, etc are immaterial. But this is contradicted by what I think is the false nature of the image.
However on looking on your German website, without translating, and in particular the black and white images of junctions and factories I can see why this image may be faked and I think it is to give a set designer a sense of the car’s scale against the cityscape. The black and white images are far better composed and look ahead to urban photographers like Gary Winograd. They are better exposed and just have a crafted, honed feel about them. I don’t think it is the same photographer. The black and whites are far better in my opinion but I couldn’t swear to it.
If you look at image 5 and 6 in the series there are board cut-outs of people to give you a sense of scale and perspective. They might not have had time to do this with your mystery image but needed something similar just in case.
This would also explain a possible link to Vere Street as given a preference you would photograph somewhere you can access easily and that you knew or if you’re using a stock image somewhere others in your industry would recognise.
The image could also be a shot showing traffic in London. It wasn’t meant to be artistic or for tourism purposes. I think, and this is a guess, intended to show congestion in London. It’s a functional, record image. I wouldn’t be surprised if the original image is in a transport/planning department archive somewhere.
So that is it. In my opinion (and yes it is only an opinion), the reaction of the people within the scene to a car that was out of the ordinary, especially in context of its day, is the most telling There is none. For two people, the photographer was the most interesting thing in front of them. What they were seeing was not the mystery car. However, I do believe there was a car there and I believe it was an Alpine. Why do I think this as opposed to say a Taxi like the painting that was made of the same scene?
A) There is too much detail in the mystery car below the waistline that I know works in the real world for it to be faked. The Alpine works perfectly at the junction area and in context of people moving around the car.
B) Please check out this image of an Alpine with roof up in CAD.
The roof is encroaching onto the tall gents (edit apologies: Man to left of tall guy. Tall gent not really applicable) legs along with the man to his left. With the Alpine removed the suggested changes to overall scene would be required. Also, having been out a few years the normal Alpine would not have been of much interest. Think of three year old cars today.
C) Why would someone have done this? We now enter total conjecture. Marko was conflicted as to whether the car was placed into a stock scene picture of transport or for a film scene mock-up (or for that matter any other unknown reasons). I believe it was for a film and I say this because:
1) The image has been created to a high but not perfect standard. The sort of thing a professional would do if under pressure of time.
2) The link above to the Ken Adams stuff in Germany that shows roads and junctions were photographed and people (even in card) were added to rooms and places to give further context to a picture.
3) People in other places have asked if it was for a film, what film (or series) of films could it be for? Well, there was a well know character called James Bond who drive a blue Sunbeam Alpine in a 1962 film called Dr No. Not long after he had a DB5 and the rest as they say is history. Looking through 1962 magazines the Harrington was a cool fast thing and being road tested.
The Bond series created the convertible Toyota after experimenting with a targa top as per this link (not verified info). Perhaps the car was a mock-up in a film studio that was never actually made in the real world? The Bond thing has been done to death so can't believe the car would not have been talked about before. However, the thought is intriguing.
4) The location of shot. Vere Street could have been on way from Soho/Eon to Pinewood (being prepared to be ridiculed by Londoners saying only if you were lost!)
To conclude. Apologies for long post, but there was a lot to go through. All above is my opinion, but an opinion based on extensive research, being involved in re-creating many cars (often from a lone image) and involving a photography expert. Have enjoyed the journey mainly. Naysayers have irritated me. There is constructive criticism, but why is it so easy to ridicule opinions on a forum, often seconds after a post, when the poster as spent considerable time trying to get somewhere? Would it not be more polite to say something like "can you show how the doors work" etc. and so on as opposed to all out hostility based on nothing but your generally unresearched opinion? Have been wrong many times during this process, but have taken on board errors and continued to work through the problem. Only asked Marko to look at image the other day and if nothing else says I have not been an Alpine evangelist, it is publishing his main findings above, that let's face it means I have spent three years attempting CAD on a car where the area above the waistline (rear wing lower?) is likely fantasy! Don't mind though. Enjoy my job, and this proves I am pretty dogged and honest in pursuit of solving car mysteries.
Finally, finally. Re picture. Here is another car I have been researching. For almost forty years, so three years for the mystery car is a drop in the ocean. The Rapport Forte. I knew the car had been driven by Mark Thatcher around Brands Hatch at the 1980 British Grand Prix in front of thousands of people and possibly televised. It was only after speaking to many old employees, all the forums, journalists... who passed me on to more journalists.. until I finally found two pictures last year.
So there you have it. A famous person, driving an unusual car, a car that was in books and magazines, in a situation that the picture shows was witnessed by tens of thousands of people, 18 years after Mystery car photo and only two pictures have been found so far and those after another epic struggle.
So for all researchers out there. For all enthusiasts trying to track down cars or information. Never give up. Ignore negativity. For me, the mystery car is now closed in my mind and although will answer the odd question and right this all up for my own website, thankfully you will not have to endure further long posts on this blasted picture!
EDIT. Forgot a really important point. Could the mystery car have been made and could it have been converted back into a standard Alpine? 100% yes.
- 30 will make him 88 at the youngest and probably dead or senile - and anything over 40 - Dead.