I have an interesting book called “The Commissar is Missing”, about the policy of Stalin to excise a person from all known photographs if the person became non-politically correct (the origin of the word, by the way). In the days before Photoshop, they would either redact the photo with black marker, or use scissors to remove certain persons and then re-arrange images as needed to fill in the gaps.
When Stalin was arresting millions for execution or slave labor, hundreds of artists were more than willing to work full time on the alteration of all public images to suit the latest party line. (That's where Orwell got his "1984" material for the "Ministry of Truth", "memory hole" and the the main character's job of "re-writer of newspaper articles.")
Here's an article in wikipedia showing the before and after of many Stalinist public photos given his "historical revision" treatment: LINK
I have it too! Fantastic book.
For all the people who can fake stuff, there are those who can decipher the fakes.