Caption:

A quarter-plate 'Midg' folding camera manufactured by W. Butcher and Sons, London, 1902-1920. This camera was used by two Bradford schoolgirls, Elsie Wright and her cousin, Frances Griffiths, to photograph the famous 'Cottingley Fairies' in July 1917. The story of the Cottingley Fairies began as a practical joke in Cottingley, near Bradford, West Yorkshire in 1917. The photographs of the 'Beck Fairies', as the girls called them, went on to become one of the most famous examples of image manipulation in photography. The fairies were actually drawings by Elsie, secured in the ground with hat pins. It was a secret the girls decided to keep until the 1980s - once they realised the extent of the deception - to protect the public reputations of those who believed in the 'truth' of the images.