COMMENTS ON ILLUSTRATIONS

Each week when I submit a biography to The E-Sylum, I try to include a photo of the subject of the article. Last week the results were interesting.

The September 17, 1892, issue of The (Brooklyn) Daily Standard Union had an engraving of Francis W. Doughty, identified here as Image 1. The story was about his book, Evidences of Man in the Drift. I am guessing that the engraving was made from a photo because it was easier for the newspaper to print the engraving. This is the image I chose to submit to The E-Sylum.

The June 7, 1891, issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle included an engraving of Francis W. Doughty, identified here as Image 2. The story was about Reverend Francis Doughty, an early settler and grandfather of Charles Doughty who has a street named after him in Brooklyn. The article does not mention Francis, the author, or establish his ancestry back to Francis, the preacher.

Image 1 and Image 2 are very similar but not identical. Perhaps it takes someone who studies die varieties to even see the difference. They are too similar to be different engravings made from the same photo. I suspect one was copied from the other or both were copied from the same previous engraving.

That's when the story gets interesting. the Newtown Historical Society (Queens, New York) published an article on "Rev. Francis Doughty – Maspeth's Puritan Founder." This was written by Christina Wilkinson, president of the society, and published on June 24, 2017. This article was illustrated with Image 2, taken from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of June 7, 1891. This image is identified as the Reverend Doughty.

Reverend Doughty is a bit of a mystery. FindaGrave gives his date of birth as November 4, 1605, and date of death as March 2, 1683. FamilySearch gives his life dates as (1604 to 1669). Wikipedia gives his life dates as (1616 to c. 1670). None provide a link across the generations to Francis the writer.

I doubt if there was ever a photo taken of Reverend Doughty. He died about two centuries too soon. However, there is a lovely color image of him identified here as image 3. This is used to identify Reverend Doughty on the FamilySearch site. The Google image search tool identifies this as Wyatt Earp. I suspect someone used photo manipulation to create the color image from the Doughty engraving.

Back in the days of print journalism, it might be expected to credit an illustration to its source. Now with the internet, any illustration can be pulled from anywhere and used without credit. An illustration can be used to illustrate someone other than the original subject. Photo manipulation and Artificial Intelligence can create new illustrations that are totally fake and not credited as such.

I have made modifications to illustrations I submit. I crop them from newspapers and clean up the borders. I remove the background from coin and medal pictures. I have used AI creations. What are the ethics for the current state of publishing? Should an image be credited to the source? Should an AI image be identified as such? This article is about portraits, but there are similar problems with coin illustrations.

Great questions - I'm curious to see what our readers think.

Minor modifications to illustrations such as cropping, rotating, and removing backgrounds are a standard part of publishing and aren't generally acknowledged. More significant alterations and enhancements like removing people, warts, double chins and airbrushing youth onto an aging celebrity probably should be acknowledged but usually aren't. AI is just the latest technology in a long line of tools for image editing and enhancement. Since it's new, people are sensitive and more aware of it.

For the E-Sylum, we often crop images without acknowledgement, such as when we crop out slabs encasing paper money. We provide links back to the sources so people can always click through and see the complete original. We do this because we prefer to focus on the numismatic item itself, not its grade or price; this also lets us display a larger, more readable image of the item. I consider it one of our value-adds as editors, and no one has ever questioned or complained about that.

As for enhancing images, we rarely attempt to adjust photograph lighting or focus, but that's mostly just to save time given the large number of images we deal with every week. Recently I have used AI to sharpen newspaper article images and extract the text; it's much better than any other tool I've used for that, and it's lightning fast. I've acknowledged this is earlier articles, but I suspect that once this becomes commonplace for me I'll just do it without bothering to comment.

As for crediting the source of images, despite the easy availability of images online, it is still important to credit sources. We do this to the extent possible, but don't enforce any rules on our contributors. We're not a journal of record with a team of fact-checkers, just an online forum for communication among collectors and researchers. We don't ask for detailed article footnotes or end notes, but will publish them if provided.

Copyright is a whole 'nother issue, and again, just because something is published openly online doesn't mean copyrights no longer hold. Fair Use laws in the U.S. give us the ability to excerpt and republish a certain amount of content, and we're mindful of crediting the original source. Articles excerpted from other numismatic or mainstream publications are kept brief and always include links to the complete article. Dealers and auction houses generally welcome such reuse with credit and links as ways of promoting their sales, so we republish that content more freely. In fact, some dealers explicitly open their sites to allow us to gather content while blocking other access.

What do readers think about these issues? -Editor