Is the Famous Photo of Lee Harvey Oswald Posing with the Gun Used to Kill JFK a Fake?: 3D Forensic Analysis Reveals the Answer

As long as the 20th cen­tu­ry remains in liv­ing mem­o­ry, the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy will con­tin­ue to draw pub­lic inter­est. A great many Amer­i­cans feel they still haven’t heard the “whole sto­ry” behind what hap­pened on Novem­ber 22, 1963; a few have ded­i­cat­ed their lives to find­ing out, grow­ing less inclined to accept the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a lone gun­man the deep­er they get into the doc­u­ments. But that gun­man, Lee Har­vey Oswald, does fig­ure direct­ly into some of the mate­r­i­al held up as evi­dence of a con­spir­a­cy. Take the “back­yard pho­tos” that depict him pos­ing with what was ulti­mate­ly found to be the very gun used to kill JFK.

Such images would seem strong­ly to impli­cate Oswald in the assas­si­na­tion, and the War­ren Com­mis­sion seems to have regard­ed them in just that way. But for near­ly six decades now, some the­o­rists have argued that the back­yard pho­tos are fake — an idea that began with Oswald him­self, who before his own assas­si­na­tion insist­ed that he’d nev­er seen them in his life, and that some­one had “super­im­posed” his face onto anoth­er body.

The Vox video above lays out the main ele­ments of one par­tic­u­lar pic­ture that have been called repeat­ed­ly into ques­tion: the angles of the shad­ows, the shape of Oswald’s chin, the length of the gun, and Oswald’s unusu­al pos­ture.

“In the 1960s and 1970s, foren­sic experts tried just about every­thing to test the authen­tic­i­ty of this pho­to,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor. They could­n’t find any evi­dence of fak­ery, but they did­n’t have the 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy at the com­mand of the UC Berke­ley School of Infor­ma­tion’s Hany Farid, a well-known spe­cial­ist in the analy­sis of dig­i­tal images. Farid and a team of researchers recon­struct­ed Oswald’s body and weapon­ry (though not the copies of The Mil­i­tant and The Work­er, two ide­o­log­i­cal­ly opposed news­pa­pers, he bran­dished in his oth­er hand) and found that every­thing added up, from the seem­ing­ly mis­aligned shad­ows cast by the sun to the sta­bil­i­ty of his odd stance. If there was indeed a con­spir­a­cy to kill JFK, then, it was­n’t a con­spir­a­cy of pro­to-Pho­to­shop­pers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

2,800 JFK Assas­si­na­tion Doc­u­ments Just Released by the Nation­al Archives

Novem­ber 22, 1963: Watch Errol Mor­ris’ Short Doc­u­men­tary About the Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion

The Exis­ten­tial­ism Files: How the FBI Tar­get­ed Camus, and Then Sartre After the JFK Assas­si­na­tion

Noam Chom­sky on Com­mem­o­rat­ing the JFK Assas­si­na­tion: It “Would Impress Kim Il-Sung”

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

Why the Sovi­ets Doc­tored Their Most Icon­ic World War II Vic­to­ry Pho­to, “Rais­ing a Flag Over the Reich­stag”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


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  • Rich Sackett says:

    Farid’s fan­cy com­put­er pic­tures have hood­winked the whole damned world. Long sto­ry short; The plumb line from his cen­ter of grav­i­ty does not land between his feet as shown. That’s obvi­ous­ly wrong and a lie. Try stand­ing like that your­self (good luck to begin with). Now look down at that spot WHICH IS ENTIRELY IN FRONT OF YOUR BODY. The real spot is in back of your hind foot. Peo­ple will believe dang near any­thing if they see a pic­ture of it. Oh wait.

    The exis­tence of very direct­ly con­fes­sion­al pic­tures is entire­ly at odds with all of Oswald’s denials. It is entire­ly non­sen­si­cal, as is him hold­ing the two news­pa­pers and a rifle with a scope simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. WTF does that?! Nobody, that’s who.

    “found that every­thing added up” It most cer­tain­ly did not. Did you read it? I did. It’s bull­shit: long on jar­gon and short on rea­son­ing. Where’s the bird’s eye ren­der­ing of the body and the dot? Miss­ing, of course. Farid’s paper is proof of only that peo­ple are very cred­u­lous in regards to com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed “evi­dence”. There’s your real sto­ry, cub reporter.

    Did you actu­al­ly watch the Vox video? I did. The 1967 guy could­n’t stand like that either. Even get­ting close and he made a pained expres­sion.

    I’m com­ing onto all this malarkey fresh in the last two days. Farid’s paper is noth­ing except an attempt to bur­nish his aca­d­e­m­ic cre­den­tials. Hap­pens all the time. Pub­lish or per­ish.

  • Dan Hill says:

    It’s a cropped pic­ture.

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