Photographer Daniel Cilia finds out that what was long thought to be a missing friar from the earliest known manipulated photo – that of a group of Capuchin friars in Malta in the mid-1800s − was actually a statue.

In the fantastic book Faking It, Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop published in 2012 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, author Mia Fineman (now curator in the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) introduces the book with a photograph done in Malta: Capuchin Friars, Valetta, Malta.

The book was published in conjunction with the exhibition curated by Fineman with the same name held at the MET, New York between October 11, 2012 and January 27, 2013. The exhibition moved to the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, in 2013.

Since the Capuchin Friars photo is considered to be the earliest known manipulated photo, the book and the exhibition started with this photo, accompanied by its paper negative.

It is known that Calvert Richard Jones was in Malta between November 1, 1845, and February 13, 1846. He then left Malta to resume his photographic tour of Sicily, Naples, Pompeii, Rome, Florence and Milan. By June 9, 1846, he was back in Britain with more than a hundred paper negatives.

Fineman writes: “On an early spring day in 1846, a group of monks posed for a photograph on the island of Malta. The man behind the camera was Jones, a blue-blooded Welsh dilettante who had learned the new art of photography directly from its English inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot.

“The calotype process (from the Greek word ‘kalos’, meaning ‘beautiful’), which Talbot patented in 1841, was the first to generate a negative that could be used to produce an unlimited number of prints...”

She added: “A few months later, Jones set off on a lengthy photographic tour of the Mediterranean, stopping for four months in Malta, where he recorded views of ships and harbours, picturesque street scenes and portraits of exotically costumed locals, including a small group of bearded and berobed Capuchin friars.

The photo’s negative shows another element in the middle, long thought to be another friar.

“The Capuchins, who had built their first Maltese monastery just outside the city walls of Valletta in 1589, would have been a novel sight for the travelling Welshman, and he made several studies of them in their hooded, espresso-coloured robes. In one, four friars cluster together on a sunny stone rooftop, their dark forms silhouetted against a bright white sky...”

Fineman then asks: “But is that what really happened? Jones’s paper negative, which survives along with the print, shows the silhouette of a fifth man lurking just behind the others, directly in the centre of the frame. It was easy enough to make him disappear; all that was required was a touch of India ink to blot out the figure on the negative; when the negative was printed, the inked-out figure vanished without a trace into the blank white of the sky. We do not know for certain who performed this bit of pre-Photoshop magic, or why. Because he had little access to chemicals or other supplies during his travels, Jones shipped his negatives back to England to be printed and archived at an establishment in Reading run by Talbot’s former valet, Nicolaas Henneman.

One doubts that Jones, or whoever it was, thought much about it in historical or ethical terms, but there it was: an amendment to the record, for beauty’s sake

“It may have been Henneman or one of his associates who altered the negative, but a more likely suspect is Jones himself: he was a skilled watercolourist who coloured his own photographs, occasionally enlivening his views of deserted streets and harbour scenes with tiny figures painted in by hand.”

A few dabs of India ink transformed this element into white sky.

In a similar vein, Dushko Petrovich wrote in 2012 in the Boston Globe: “... the enterprising Calvert Richard Jones produced the first known example of a photographic fake. It’s hard to know whether it was Jones himself or an assistant who wielded the fateful brush, but whoever was processing a quaint image of some Capuchin friars in Malta decided to make a little change. The poor monk in the middle was apparently spoiling the composition, so he was removed − transformed into white sky, simply and without a trace, by a few dabs of India ink − before the revised image was printed and probably sold as a souvenir. One doubts that Jones, or whoever it was, thought much about it in historical or ethical terms, but there it was: an amendment to the record, for beauty’s sake.”

At the National Science and Media Museum at Bradford (where the original negatives and prints are held), the curatorial description mentions this manipulation and adds that “Jones was eager to market his photographs as souvenirs for tourists and probably felt that the fifth man crowded the composition”.

There are many other books, magazines and online articles which refer to this manipulation. They all refer to the removal of a fifth Capuchin monk. In fact, Jones photographed only four monks on the roof of the church of the convent of the Franciscan Capuchin Friars in Floriana. There was never a fifth monk!

I had always wondered why Jones would have arbitrarily removed a friar. Being an able artist before getting interested in photography, he was fully aware of the importance of composition. He could have easily asked the friar to not step in the photo, thus avoiding including him at all.

In 2014 I did the photography for a Heritage Malta collective memory project and exhibition called Qatt ma Ninsa (Everything has a story to tell) in collaboration with the Valletta 2018 Foundation. One of the exhibits was an album with photographs taken by Gunner Mark (Henry) Ward (1913-1993) during his stay in Malta between 1935 and 1936.

Capuchins’ rough prints No. 7 and (bottom) No. 8, done before the negatives were retouched with India ink. Jones decided to make the prints from No. 8.

The album was donated by relatives to the Malta Maritime Museum in 2008.

One of the photos of Gnr Ward shows the facade of the church and convent of the Franciscan Capuchin Friars in Floriana in 1935/1936 before the church was destroyed during an air raid on April 4, 1942. In the reconstruction after the war, the building was rebuilt with a new facade. In Gnr Ward’s photo, it is clear that there were two statues on the roof of the pre-World War II church. I thus realised that it was a statue that had been removed from the 1845/6 photo and not a friar!

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I had the time to conduct in-depth research on this story, mostly thanks to a voluminous online resource − The Talbot Catalogue Raisonné − put together over four decades. This impressive body of work was performed by Larry J. Schaaf and his staff, who painstakingly went through 25,000 items in public and private collections. The result of this commendable work was a raisonné (a descriptive catalogue of works of art with scholarly annotations) of all known original paper negatives and salt prints of  Talbot, the inventor of the photographic negative procedure.

To put together this raisonné, Schaaf and his staff scrutinised over more than 100 collections worldwide. The raisonné also features the work of CRM Talbot, Constance Talbot, Nicolaas Henneman, Jones, George Bridges and Henry Collen, all relatives or photographers associated with Talbot.

A 1930s photo of St Francis Friary in Floriana by Gnr Mark (Henry) Ward, shows two statues on the roof, one of which, according to the author, is the missing element in Jones’s print.

Here I found that Jones did two photographs on the roof of the convent’s church. Both feature four friars and the white statue appears behind the friars in both photos. I have a hunch that Jones had already tried to cover the statue with the body of a friar during the shooting of the photograph.

On the rough print marked as No. 7, one of the friars nearly covers the whole statue with his body. The rough print marked No. 8 displays the friars in a different position. Both of these rough prints were done before the negatives were retouched with India ink.

An examination of the original negatives reveals that a better job at retouching was done with No. 8 than No. 7. Either because of this (India ink could not be removed once the paper negative was daubed with it) or because Jones considered No. 8 photo to be a better composition, he chose this negative to make the prints from.

I agree that the statue would have ruined the composition, which is why I endorse Jones’s decision to hide it. It seems also very likely that it was Jones himself who applied the Indian ink. As Fineman points out, Jones was a skilled watercolourist with the technical ability to retouch the paper negative. A white statue on a white background in between the four dark friars would have distracted the eye of the viewer from the subject matter, the four friars.

We are on the brink of an exciting new threshold of photography. Only recently, the makers of Photoshop brought out a new mobile app called Photoshop Camera, which uses artificial intelligence to correct exposure and distortion, and apply filters during the actual shooting of the photo without the need to retouch them afterwards.

I am sure that Jones would be awestruck by the wonders and game-changing developments unfolding in contemporary photograph, which are a far cry from the very beginning of photography when he immortalised the four friars and a statue in Floriana 175 years ago!

The author acknowledges the help given by Judge Emeritus Giovanni Bonello to put together this write-up.