There are only a few photographs that made headlines recently.
One is Man Ray’s Le Violon d’Ingres for its price tag of $12,400,000.
Or the authorship discussion around the “Napalm Girl” Phan Thị Kim Phúc.
A third photograph – a snapshot from a London house two decades ago – has a similar price tag attached like Le Violon d’Ingres.
My most recent paper at https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.1223 examines this infamous photograph using the latest image analysis techniques.
This study offers a forensic assessment of a widely circulated photograph featuring Prince Andrew, Virginia Giuffre, and Ghislaine Maxwell – an image that has played a pivotal role in public discourse and legal narratives. Through analysis of multiple published versions, several inconsistencies are identified, including irregularities in lighting, posture, and physical interaction, which are more consistent with digital compositing than with an unaltered snapshot. While the absence of the original negative and a verifiable audit trail precludes definitive conclusions, the technical and contextual anomalies suggest that the image may have been deliberately constructed. Nevertheless, without additional evidence, the photograph remains an unresolved but symbolically charged fragment within a complex story of abuse, memory, and contested truth.
I provide also a 3D reconstruction of the scene although some people may find it easier to watch the video instead.
Even as there are now reasonable doubts on the image, the whole story may be true. Maybe like an artist is painting a scene from memory, this photograph could be showing a real scene although not in a physical sense.
An Pamela-Meyer-type analysis of the video above at least did not show that Virginia Giuffre is lying – her body language is more consistent with the reporting of a trauma survivor. So, to quote my laste sentence, this
photograph remains an unresolved but symbolically charged fragment within a complex story of abuse, memory, and contested truth.
