Saturday, November 6, 2010

RIP Geoffrey Crawley, he understood it was enough for the garden to be beautiful.

Geoffrey Crawley, 83, Photographic Scientist - NYTimes.com:

The Cottingley Fairies. Image via Museum of Hoaxes.

Were there really fairies at the bottom of the garden, or was it merely a childhood prank gone strangely and lastingly awry?


That, for six decades, was the central question behind the Cottingley fairies mystery, the story of two English schoolgirls who claimed to have taken five pictures of fairy folk in the 1910s and afterward.


Set awhirl by the international news media, the girls’ account won the support of many powerful people, including one of the most famous literary men in Britain. It inspired books and, later on, films, including “Fairy Tale: A True Story” (1997), starring Peter O’Toole, and “Photographing Fairies” (1997), starring Ben Kingsley.


From the start, there were doubters. But there was no conclusive proof of deception until the 1980s, when a series of articles by the English photographic scientist Geoffrey Crawley helped reveal the story for what it was: one of the most enduring, if inadvertent, photographic hoaxes of the 20th century.


A polymath who was variously a skilled pianist, linguist, chemist, inventor and editor, Mr. Crawley died on Oct. 29, at 83, at his home in Westcliff-on-Sea, England.

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