Award-winning Chinese photographer apologizes for forgery after year-long dispute

BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese photographer who forged an award-winning photograph has apologized for his bad behavior.

Monday's People's Day reported that Zhang Liang, a former photographer of Harbin Daily, admitted that he added a pigeon to a photo using Photoshop software. The photo was taken in February 2004 and showed pigeons receiving bird flu vaccine shots from medical workers in front of Sophia Cathedral in Harbin.

The photo won the top prize in the first China International Press Photo Contest, held by the Photojournalist Society of China (PSC) in 2005.

"I would like to apologize to the public," said Zhang, who had been dismissed from Harbin Daily four days ago.

According to Zhang, he copied the pigeon in the top right corner of his photo and pasted it in the top left corner.

"I did it to make the photo perfect," Zhang was quoted by the newspaper, "It was the first time for me to perfect pictures with computer technology and I did it only once."

Last Thursday, the PSC cancelled the award granted to Zhang's photo after an expert panel confirmed it was forged.

But the society has been under criticism that it had been slow on the uptake.

The photo was first questioned online last April by netizens and Xu Lin, a PSC official.

Late last month, Jiang Duo, one of the judges for the contest and former PSC vice-chairman, quit because of the society's ambiguous attitude toward the forgery accusation.

Jiang made an online apology for not being able to identify the forgery, while acknowledging the photo as a fake.

"It is a heart-breaking choice. But I made up my mind because the society I founded is tolerating cheating," he said in a personal blog.

But Hu Ying, secret-general of the PSC and also a member of the contest panel, denied that the PSC has delayed the probe on the photo.

"The PSC has placed great importance on this event. The investigation progressed slowly because of a busy schedule in the latter half of last year," he told Shanghai Morning Post.

Several forgery scandals have hit the country's photography circle in the past few years.

On February this year, an award-winning photographer Liu Weiqiang admitted that he faked a photo showing more than 20 Tibetan antelopes roaming peacefully under a railway bridge along the Qinghai-Tibet railway where a train was roaring past.

His photo had been chosen as one of "the 10 most impressive news photos of 2006", an annual event sponsored by Chinese Central Television.

With computer technology, it is very easy and costs little for photographers to forge photos, said Xu Lin, the PSC official who had actively pushed the investigation into Zhang's photo forgery.

"Driven by profits and under great pressure, some turn to computer technologies to make photos look better and easy to be chosen by editors," he said.

Zhang also said that some other photographers use computer software to get rid of objects in original pictures, such as wires and chimneys, which made him think it is no big deal.

"I was wrong to be opportunistic," he said.

"I admired Zhang for admitting what he did was wrong. It is the right thing to do," Xu said.

The industry and society should also think of why a photo like Zhang's would win a prize, said Prof. Huang Dan, with the School of Journalism of Shanghai-based Fudan University.

"I am sorry to find that some media do not realize that the influence of news reports is determined by their credibility," Huang said.