Altered Pepper..

[TheDZ]

..so I've been gazing endlessly at the Pepper cover,
waiting patiently for some confirmation of what I've been seeing..

With Mopeds return and his contribution of excellent alternate cover shots,
I believe I have found a rather large alteration on the published
cover shot.

When I did this pic

I realized that the bass drum was not centered on the cover..
I also realized that in order for the Pepper cover to be centered..
that the Shirley Temple/Grandmother doll figures were in the
wrong place..
I wondered if there were any shots with the dolls in their
proper place..
and lo and behold..

There they are, directly in front of Diana D'ors, right where they should be..

I am thinking that the dolls were moved after the shot was taken!
ie: the negatives were altered..!
Why? I believe an attempt to destroy the symmetry and therefore
a big part of the meaning of the Cover..

The released cover that we all know has been altered
as demonstrated by Moped earlier..


It was twisted out of level and it's aspect ratio changed..
I had a hard time getting a straight line on the cover,
but using this shot..

makes straight lines much easier..


Anyhow this pic..

shows the area in question..
What I've noticed is that the Pepper cover was manipulated in at least three sessions..
The first was the negative alteration to change the symmetry , and then the airbrushing to get rid of Leo Gorcey
and Mahatma Ghandi, and to enhance the BEATLES flowers for legibility.
The airbrushing/pen alterations are fairly easy to
see because they are quite dark/noticeable in comparison to the rest of
the picture.
The skewing of the shot probably took place after all the
other alterations were done.

The dark area surrounding the flowers and TV, it's like they slid everything over and then darkened the area
where the flowers, tv candelabra were.

Who messed with the cover...

Just thinking out loud..

[plastic paul]

Fantastic DZ, as you are aware Pepper is my favourite part to PID and i believe it (coupled with MMT), hold the indisputable answers.

I, like you say, often muse over the cover of pepper, trying to find the key or the code or the one clue that will blow this whole thing outta the water, but often to no avail, yet you seem to manage to find a lot, so we'd better keep going, i know we'll get there some day.

I wanna hear from Apollo, coz he seemed to have a major interest in this as well.

PS. What is it with Shirley F***ING Temple???

[byrdsmaniac]

DZ wrote:
"I am thinking that the dolls were moved after the shot was taken!
ie: the negatives were altered..!
Why? I believe an attempt to destroy the symmetry and therefore
a big part of the meaning of the Cover.."

I doubt it. Altering negatives isn't a very practical techniique, imo. Why not just alter the print?
And what meaning do you feel was lost?
I can't imagine much meaning was lost. Most people would see the drum as the center.

[moped]

Fascinating topic. It's Pepper, after all... I can only offer dry technical commentary...sorry, it's my nature.
Let me point out that that smudging is very unusual looking, I never noticed it before...it's not supposed to be visible.

To remove variables, I've looked at the various posed photos and they all are from the same pov, so there's no changed
perspective to cause a particular figure to appear at different locations in various shots. The camera was set from the
beginning to act as the "director's station", and the set was constructed to work from that point...I'm hypothesizing,
but, I mean, the entire project was about the creation of a photograph. I believe this shows that camera:



I'll have to agree with Byrds about altering a negative...it would be nearly impossible to move an object and not have
evidence. First, the object would have to be cut out...cutting film with a knife could produce slight warping of the
plastic, and a strip of image the thickness of the blade would be gone. And, whatever place the object would be moved to
would also have to be removed, in the exact same size and shape of the cutout, and even if done correctly there's a "border"
of missing image.

Maybe the photo was altered, this is much more realistic, but the 'original' photo looks pretty convincing. Also, look at
this image.



Looks the same (if worse in quality), but it's a different photo; see the horn's angle in John's hand. Here, the dolls are
also moved. For the record I've been looking a lot for a better copy of this one but haven't had luck...

Back to the 'original' photo, the smudging is in evidence too, but one possibility is that the smudging is actually on the
background cutouts themselves. This might have been to hide the base of the cutouts so that they don't form a busy backdrop
to the low foreground objects.

Assuming this, we see that the smudging at the backdrop is very rough, but it was meant to be hidden by those dolls.
Those dolls were absolutely supposed to be there, else they would have either not smudged that area, or done a cleaner job.

[moped]

byrdsmaniac said:

And what meaning do you feel was lost?
I can't imagine much meaning was lost. Most people would see the drum as the center.

DZ is right about this. The cover, as published, is all out of whack, on so many levels...

[TheDZ]

This is Leo Gorcey..

This is Mahatma Ghandi

Just so we can see what print alteration looks like..

Other areas of print alteration include

The last E contains a lot of alteration shown by dark black.
(Magic Marker?)
The top left of the E and the S and down between the letters is most obvious.
The bottom of the Shirley Temple doll's right sleeve has been magic markered
to blot out the dark blue of the sweater.
Now, just above that area, at the bottom of Diana Dor's
dress is a large black area. There's a straight line just above
the flare of the dress..
Now move left and you'll see another stright horizontal
line on the other side of Diana D'ors. This area blends
into the 'black fog' at the feet of the Marlene and Shirley
Temple cutouts.
Those lines could be the bottom of the other cutouts, but
they may also be evidence of negative cutting, with the
'fog' added to cover the splices and cuts down low.

I'm no expert on negative cutting, but what Byrds and
Moped have said, makes sense.
However, I believe we may be dealing with advanced
techniques, and multiple levels of alteration...

The 'fog' exists in this picture..

Right in front of John's leg..
This print may have been altered as well.

The 'fog' seems absent here..

but the dolls are in the cover shot positions..
Also note that the Grandmother dolls shoes are visible here,
but totally obscured in the cover shot.( Camera Angle is different, but the cover is darker in that area)

I think that the removal of Leo Gorcey and Ghandi might
have been convenient cover stories to enable the deeper
alteration of the cover.
'Plausible Deniability'..

Either way, they mucked with the cover, quite a bit..

[plastic paul]

Ok, in that last picture everything looks realistic and there is a real sense of 3d, whereas the actual cover looks extremely flat with no sense of depth.

I may be wrong but is the drumskin real? As in is the Sgt. Pepper motif a drawn in feature?

The grandmother figure has to be a real person surely!!!

[TPIMaster]

Why was that head of the cowboy "edited out" on the right of this picture?

[plastic paul]

Although i don't think it's as clear cut as the answer i'll give, and it looks dodgy, on page 7 of Sgt. Pepper booklet there is the same
pattern in the same place which looks like a photographers flash shade or whatever they call it, it's clearly doctored though!

[defhermit]

plastic, why does your post's text extend so far to the right?

[plastic paul]

Because there are some large pictures in this thread, but i can fix it i guess.

[TheDZ]

Now where's that darned TV antenna..
Guess they had some good photo editors back then..

BTW PlasticPaul that area covering the cowboy's head is just a light
shroud illuminating (oops, almost a scary word there ) the
flowers in the dirt..
Lighting that scene must have been a bugger because of all
the flat cutouts reflecting back at the camera...

[plastic paul]

Yeh, i see i thought that may be the case, but i thought it was a flash for the camera.

[moped]

Hmm...

[TheDZ]

moped said:

Hmm...

Yeah baby, Groovy !

That's it Moped, nicely done. Nothing is lost when
the dolls are put back..only symmetry gained.

The TV antenna thing seems pretty blatant to me, perhaps
it's in the original shot, just too dark to see, but I can't seem to find it..

[plastic paul]

That looks most like it, they must have moved it to create the "walrus-come-torso symmetry"

Speaking of which, i think that should be included DZ

[TheDZ]

Okey Dokey..

Apollo mentioned this as being a walrus mirrored in the Pepper cover,
so I got the one Jojo posted some time ago
and then make a quick mirror of the edge of the alternate
cover above..

[moped]

DZ love the Austin ;D 8-)Thanks.

Yeah, that antenna...the original photo is terribly compressed...that antenna is very thin,
a few pixels wide if that, it could have gotten lost in the jpeg algorithm.

I agree 100% the composition is in every way better,
but I'm still uncertain if the photo was doctored in this
fashion or if those figures were photographed there...
Part of that animation excercise was to see the effect of moving that group on a photo itself...

the TV, being partially behind the bust , would have some missing (left and bottom).

The RS doll wouldn't have one of it's shoes.

Diana Dorrs figure would be missing quite a bit after the move. That dress pattern is incredibly detailed.

A lot of very involved work to fill in the blanks...

One possibility is that the group of figures was sourced from another photo, one where they're placed there...
if so they should have included in that cutout what's currently fogged over...

This is gonna drive me batty... ;D

[nekto]

"Well here's another place you can go,
where everything flows

Looking through the bent backed tulips
to see how the other half lives,
looking through a glass onion"


You try to find something in the wrong place.
Place mirror to the upper side of bouquet and to uppur and lower sides of yellow thing on the flower-bed and you'll see a couple interesting Johnny's jokes.

[plastic paul]

Lol, quite moped, but i suppose that's what it's all about!

Please expand nekto, i can't see what you mean

[moped]

First try at a restored composition...



DZ, comments? The doll placement here is not far enough over, based on the alternate pose above...
the TV is a piece of the puzzle since it's hidden in those shots...

I screwed up the plant on the right...

[nekto]

nice face

10 03

dead
As quality as I can. I can't to neatly repeat on computer what I see in mirror.

[byrdsmaniac]

Wow Nekto, that's incredible! Good work!
10/03/66 I presume.
And I just have to ask: How did you know?
How did you know to look there?

[nekto]

coz I found enchiridions in the Glass Onion.

One and one and one is three.
The same date.
And in the I'm so tired " ten tree Paul is dead miss him miss him miss him"

[byrdsmaniac]

nekto said:

And in the I'm so tired " ten tree Paul is dead miss him miss him miss him"

ten three