Digital Manipulation: What is "Pure Photography?"
There are several issues to address. The first thing is a matter of trust, and the second is a matter of artistic expression. Unfortunately, people are moving towards non-acceptance of aesthetic unless it's been accompanied by truth. So, the question then becomes, "What is truth in photography?" Or, put another way, "What is Pure Photography?"
http://www.danheller.com/faq-manipulation.html
Ever since photography was first invented in the 1800ââ¬â¢s, people have been doctoring images. From the army exaggerating military victories to dictators removing political figures who have fallen out of favor, photo manipulation has a long history.  Now you made the valid point that what used to be less the norm is becoming more the norm. Everybody now has a camera and everybody has fairly sophisticated computing power in form of a laptop, tablet or a smart device. Everybody has access to sophisticated photo editing software. Now we have seen a democratization of the ability to alter photographs.
http://onmedia.dw-akademie.com/english/?p=9417
Just about every photograph we encounter, whether itââ¬â¢s on a computer screen or in a magazine or on a billboard, has been retouched or manipulated digitally in some way, most likely using Photoshop. From simple retouching like removing red-eye, to complex manipulation like removing people, Photoshop has dramatically changed the way we use the medium of photography. Or has it?
An exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shows how photographers long before the digital era regularly employed techniques of manipulation in their work. Some merely compensated for the mediumââ¬â¢s limitations, while others used manipulation to create obviously fabricated scenes.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/slide-sh...photoshop/
Though photo manipulation has become more common in the age of digital cameras and image editing software, it actually dates back almost as far as the invention of photography. The pages that follow contain an overview of some of the more notable instances of photo manipulation in history. For recent years, an exhaustive inventory of every photo manipulation would be nearly impossible, so we focus here on the instances that have been most controversial or notorious, or ones that raise the most interesting ethical questions.
http://pth.izitru.com/
A digital composite of a British soldier in Basra, gesturing to Iraqi civilians urging them to seek cover, appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times shortly after the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. Brian Walski, a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times and a 30-year veteran of the news business, was fired after his editors discovered that he had combined two of his photographs to "improve" the composition.
This gallery is curated by Fourandsix Technologies, Inc., providers of the image authentication service at izitru.com.