Japan: The Woman in the Audience

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This is a photograph that I see more and more of. According to all of the sources online, it shows an audience attending a psychic TV show in Japan. The bizarre angle of the subject’s head, her pale face, strange eyes and half-crazed expression caught the photographer’s eye and the image was posted online. First getting noticed online around mid-2015, it seems to have been first posted as early as 2011. Since then it gained some infamy and was believed by enough people that it made it into mainstream media. Here it is in a magazine (if anyone can translate the page’s text into English please comment):

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But of course, it’s fake: the subject’s head has been graphically manipulated to appear unnatural. While the original is also available online (and below) it is conveniently ignored by most of the websites that recount this story. Interestingly though, the original is almost as creepy as the doctored version. While I’m sure that the subject, having noticed the photographer, is simply smiling, it effectively demonstrates how images might be perceived when they are taken out of context.