“Nobody can prove whether or not that photograph has been doctored …“ Prince Andrew replied when asked if he thought the photograph was fake. He’s correct.
“From the investigations that we’ve done, you can’t prove whether or not that photograph is faked or not because it is a photograph of a photograph of a photograph. So it’s very difficult to be able to prove it but I don’t remember that photograph ever being taken” Prince Andrew said in his 2019 interview with the BBC. He’s correct.
“There’s never been an original and further there is no photograph. I’ve only ever seen a photocopy of it” Ghislaine Maxwell said from prison in January 2023. She’s correct, too.
Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell have had good advice. It is impossible to be 100% certain that the photo has been manipulated by examining a copy – a photo of a photo.
Just as Giuffre would have to produce the original photographic print or film negative for her to prove beyond any doubt that the photo had not been manipulated, Andrew’s legal team would have to produce the original photo of Andrew’s head-shot in another photo to prove beyond any doubt that the Giuffre image has been manipulated.
Speculation about the authenticity either way remains just that and it is a moot point legally unless Prince Andrew can convince a judge to nullify his settlement agreement with Giuffre and hear a new court case, which would seem unlikely … unless a Prince can influence a Judge.
To correct two points in the above quotations:
° Andrew saying “a photograph of a photograph of a photograph” is not 100% accurate as both the Mail On Sunday and FBI’s exhibit photo were photos of a photo, just one step in the copying process, not two.
° Ghislaine’s quote “There’s never been an original and further there is no photograph” is inaccurate – there must have been an original for a copy to be made. Unless both the Mail On Sunday in London, and the FBI in Florida both ‘manufacture’ news photos and evidence to convict someone and embarrass a prince, then Ghislaine’s accusation from her prison remains questionable.
Prince Andrew has not been criminally charged and has continued to deny the accusations and ever meeting Virginia Roberts/Giuffre.
What do we know about the photo?
Giuffre is not a keen photographer. She refers to the “little yellow camera” that Jeffrey Epstein gave to her. The camera was possibly a Kodak Advantix F300 or similar point-and-shoot compact camera with a built-in flash. She says that the photographer was Epstein, who managed to get his finger in the uncropped version of the photograph.
Reading the image
We can see three happy people, a man with his arm around a girl, they both have grins on their faces. A woman is standing behind them, also smiling. The girl is young and leaning into the man. The photographer’s flash is reflected back from a glass window behind the trio. The balustrade on the left suggests the trio is upstairs.
The sleeveless tops on the females and the open window suggests it is warm weather. Giuffre says the photo was taken on the evening of March 10th, 2001, at Maxwell’s Belgravia home in London. The weather in London that night was ‘unsettled’ with showers, and 7-10°C. The temperature was about 15°C earlier in the day.
Of everything that I’ve analysed in this photo, the small issue of wearing summer clothes on a cool evening is my only question as to whether the photo confirms Giuffre’s narrative. This is the same evening that Prince Andrew was “sweating profusely”. Perhaps Maxwell makes use of central heating.
“Photographs cannot create a moral position, but they can reinforce one—and can help build a nascent one.” – Susan Sontag, On Photography (links to Amazon)
Is what we see in the photo consistent with the girl’s claim?
The answer is subjective but most people can see the consistency with the girl’s story. The girl seems to be a willing participate, in awe of the man and eager to please the adults in the room. Remember the girl is a minor, the man is a prince and the woman has been convicted of manipulating girls into exactly this situation.
All the elements in the photo and the context in which we see them fit the narrative of the girl’s story. There is nothing out of place, except perhaps the summer clothes on a cool London evening, to lead us to believe her story is not true.
$10 million question – is the Prince Andrew photo real or fake?
When Prince Andrew said “Nobody can prove whether or not that photograph has been doctored” he was right.
When Ghislaine Maxwell said “There’s never been an original and further there is no photograph. I’ve only ever seen a photocopy of it” she was alluding to the fact that without the original photograph, no-one can be 100% certain that the photograph is real or fake.
It would be difficult to find two photos that matched for a successful and undetectable cut and paste – the new ‘head’ to be pasted onto a body would need to be of similar lighting and shadows, similar red-eye or other lighting reflections in the eyes and lighting cast onto the subjects, and suitable pose and posture.
For both the head and body to meet all those criteria and have the same size pixels, which would be seen when magnified, would be extremely rare, if not impossible, especially considering a previously unknown print who be needed.
The main tell tale sign of a doctored fake photo are the joins between the two photos, especially when magnified to show the size of the pixels and especially when zooming in on the diagonal lines in the photo (such as Prince Andrew’s collar or Giuffre’s hair against the background of the wall behind her). A photo of a photo would hide those joins – the new photo’s pixel size is all the same, so any modifications would be difficult to see.
All that said, I cannot see any evidence that the photo has been doctored, or tampered with using Photoshop or image editing software. The caveat is – as Andrew and Maxwell have said – no-one can be 100% certain unless looking at the original photo.
“Cameras miniaturize experience, transform history into spectacle.” – Susan Sontag, On Photography (links to Amazon)
A photo of a photo
There were two “copies” of the original photograph made in 2011, one by the Mail of Sunday newspaper in London, and one made by the FBI in the USA.
The Mail on Sunday copy was made by Michael Thomas, a New Zealand photojournalist. Thomas has said that the original photo that he saw was a standard typical photograph that people got from chemist mini-lab developers in the days of film photography, and that it was real.
It is a standard newspaper practice to copy an image by taking a photograph of it, so that the original can be returned to the owner. The newspaper paid $160,000 to Giuffre for an interview and the picture.
In January 2023 the Mail On Sunday published the reverse of the photograph showing the chemist’s name and date of development and printing of the original as further evidence that their photo is genuine.
Giuffre was first contacted by the FBI in 2007, but it seems there were unaware of the existence of the photograph until it was published in the Mail On Sunday in 2011. The FBI requested the original photo from Giuffre, then they also made a copy and gave the original photograph back to Giuffre.
Lighting and the Red Eye Effect
The red-eye effect in photography is the common appearance of red pupils in color photographs of the eyes of humans and several other animals. It occurs when using a photographic flash that is very close to the camera lens (as with most compact cameras) in low ambient light. It is caused by the flash light entering the eyeball through the pupil and bouncing back off the eye’s fundus.
The red eye is not as pronounced in Ghislaine’s eyes because she is a few feet or at least a metre behind the other two people in the photo. The flash has further to travel from the camera to the subject. This is consistent with what normally occurs and suggests that the photo is real and has not been manipulated or altered.
The lighting in any photograph is reflected in the eyes of people in photographs. Look at any magazine image and you’ll be able to see the light source’s shape and intensity in the eyes. A square or rectangle shows the light source is a window or studio light box, depending on the intensity, while small pics of light indicates a flash.
The overall lighting being cast onto the people is similar, especially the two people in the foreground. The clarity and shadows of the faces all suggest that the lighting in the photo is consistent and real, and has not been manipulated or altered.
Maxwell’s slightly shiny skin compared to Giuffre and Andrew’s skin is consistent with flash reflecting off cream-based makeup and her sun tanned complexion. The youthful skin of Giuffre shows little makeup, if any, and of course Andrew isn’t wearing make-up.
Diagonals
The diagonal lines in a photograph are generally the first areas to be examined to determine if a photograph has been “photo-shopped” or manipulated.
The joined lines usually have some form of tell-tale ‘clag’ because of the differences in shading, colours and pixel size of the two images that were cut and pasted together. This clag is less visible in photos of a photo because there are no differences in pixel size in the new copied image.
We’re talking about computer manipulation here. The old school method of physically cutting a print and pasting it onto a new photo does not have the tell-tale clag.
Reverse image search
Prince Andrew is one of the most photographed people on earth. Finding another image of Andrew’s head to paste onto the body is not impossible. However, a reverse image search of Andrew’s head reveals no other sources were found other than the one attached to the body in the photograph under examination.
Of course, there are photographs of Andrew in existence that are not on the internet. If an image manipulation expert used another photo of Andrew to cut/paste the head, the original has not been detected by the reverse image search engines.
We used TinEye‘s image recognition and reverse image search, plus Google Reverse Image Search, and both did not reveal other original photos showing Prince Andrew’s head in that pose or lighting.
Where is the original photo?
In 2016, when Ms Giuffre was being deposed by lawyers for Maxwell she was asked about its location and said that “It’s not in my possession right now” and that it was “probably in some storage boxes.”
She also said the image could be at her home or her in-laws’ home in Sydney, saying, “I mean, there’s seven boxes full of Nerf guns, my kids’ toys, photos. I don’t know what other documents would be in there.”
Attempts to claim the photo is false …
Every attempt to prove the photo is not real has been debunked:
° his fat fingers don’t match (they do),
° he doesn’t hug or have public displays of affection (google reveals dozens of examples),
° their heights aren’t in proportion (they are, Andrew is around 182 cm and Ms Giuffre is 176 cm),
° its not the inside of Maxwell’s house (the floor plan matches perfectly),
° his arm is too short to reach around her (it matches perfectly),
etc etc.
The window in the photo matches the exterior photos of Maxwell’s Belgravia house. The Daily Mail has the floorplan of Maxwell’s house at 44 Kinnerton Street Belgravia London, showing where each person stood in the photo.
If it was fake photograph, then every media organisation in the world would now be sued for publishing it.
Other famous images in this case
Timeline
1953 Jeffrey Epstein born in Brooklyn, New York City, January 20, 1953
1960 Prince Andrew, Duke of York, KG, GCVO, CD (Andrew Albert Christian Edward; born 19 February 1960), third child of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip, currently eighth in the line of succession to the British throne – at the time, Andrew was the 4th in line to the British throne.
1961 Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell born in France, 25 December 1961. The ninth and youngest child of Czech-born, Robert Maxwell, owner of Mirror Group Newspapers who was nicknamed the “bouncing Czech” by Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Robert Maxwell had known links to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), to the Soviet KGB, and to the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Ghislaine was raised in Oxford, England.
1983 Virginia Roberts born 9 August, 1983
1991 Robert Maxwell’s body was discovered floating in the Atlantic Ocean, after apparently fallen overboard from his yacht. Six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence services attended Maxwell’s funeral in Israel, while Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogised him and stated: “He has done more for Israel than can today be told.”
1992 Jeffrey Epstein filmed with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago checking out young women dancing. Prince Andrew separates from his wife, Sarah Ferguson (they divorce in 1996).
2000 Virginia Roberts was working at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida where she met Ghislaine Maxwell who offered her a job with Epstein.
2001 March. Roberts claims Prince Andrew had sex with her after they went dancing in a nightclub. In a 2019 interview with the BBC, Prince Andrew remembered he was with his daughter at Pizza Express, Woking that night back in 2001. Roberts claims that Prince Andrew had sex with her on two other occasions, in New York and on Epstein Island, when she was 17 years old.
2005 Police in Florida began investigating Epstein after a parent reported that he had sexually abused her 14-year-old daughter.
2007 Virginia Giuffre was contacted by the FBI in 2007.
2008 Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted in Florida state court of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He was convicted of only these two crimes as part of a controversial plea deal; federal officials had identified 36 girls, some as young as 14 years old, whom Epstein had allegedly sexually abused. He served almost 13 months in custody and paid settlements to victims. Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago a few months prior to Epstein’s conviction in 2008.
2009 Virginia Giuffre filed a lawsuit as Jane Doe against Epstein and Maxwell alleging sexual trafficking when she was a minor.
2010 Prince Andrew visits Jeffrey Epstein in Manhattan, New York in December, and they go for a walk to discuss matters, and as Andrew says, for him to tell Epstein they can’t be friends. Andrew then stayed in Epstein’s mansion for four days. During that time Andrew was filmed peeking from the door of the mansion and waving to Katherine Keating, daughter of former Australian prime minister Paul Keating (there is no suggestion or evidence of any kind of relationship between the pair).
2011 Giuffre discussed her claims against Epstein and Andrew with the media.
The Mail on Sunday make a copy of the original photo, taken by a freelance New Zealand photojournalist.
2011 Giuffre gave the picture to the FBI as part of their investigations into Epstein after the photo had come to their attention when published in the Mail on Sunday. The FBI copied it and handed back the original the same year, Giuffre said in her testimony.
2014 and 2015 Giuffre sued Maxwell for defamation in 2015, and the case was settled in Giuffre’s favor for an undisclosed sum in 2017.
2019 Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking conspiracy, and the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York.
The first batch of documents from Giuffre’s 2014 law suit were released to the public on August 9, 2019, further implicating Epstein, Maxwell, and a number of their associates. The following day, August 10, the day after Virginia Giuffre’s 36th birthday, Epstein died in jail. The medical examiner ruled that his death was a suicide by hanging.
2021 Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted on U.S. federal charges of enticement of minors, sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping him procure girls, including a 14-year-old, for child sexual abuse and prostitution.
June 2022, Maxwell was sentenced in a New York court to 20 years imprisonment. She faces a second criminal trial for two charges of lying under oath about Epstein’s abuse of underage girls.
The grand old duke of York,
He paid £12-million quid,
To some that he’d never met,
For something he never did.
