How Political Ads Use Image Manipulation to Reinforce Stereotypes

Did a pro-Cuomo PAC darken a photo of Zohran Mamdani to over-emphasize his beard and play into Islamophobic tropes?

That’s the allegation and, whether or not it was intentional, it fits into a long, documented pattern in political media.

We’ve seen this before.
Images of candidates, especially candidates of color, have been manipulated, darkened, desaturated, or selectively chosen to provoke fear or suspicion. Sometimes it’s subtle. Sometimes it’s overt. But it’s rarely accidental.

As someone who’s worked on campaigns and created my fair share of political ads (including opposition pieces), I can tell you: photo selection is deliberate.

The contrast, the crop, the frame. It’s all considered.

And when a candidate has darker skin, it gets even more complicated. Photography has a long technical history of bias against non-white skin tones, and those legacy issues still show up today in both lighting and post-processing.

In the age of AI, it’s increasingly hard to tell what’s real. But even without deepfakes, small choices in how we present real people can shape how they’re perceived.

We need to stay aware of how visual media is used—sometimes quietly—to reinforce fear, bias, and division.

• Willie Horton (1988, Bush Campaign)
  Perhaps most famously, during the 1988 presidential race, George H.W. Bush’s campaign featured a mugshot of convicted felon Willie Horton in a widely criticized attack ad. While the image was not of a candidate, the grainy black-and-white photo of Horton, a Black man, was shown alongside cleaner images of white politicians was used to evoke fear and paint Democrat Michael Dukakis as soft on crime. 

• Barack Obama (2008, Republican Attack Ads)
  Research from Oxford University found that Republican-aligned ads often presented Barack Obama with a noticeably darker skin tone than in unedited footage. This visual strategy appeared in ads that portrayed him as untrustworthy or dangerous, playing into racist tropes about Black men and crime. The edits were subtle but consistent.

• Cori Bush (2024, AIPAC-Backed Ads)
  In 2024, Representative Cori Bush stated that images of her used in attack ads funded by AIPAC-aligned groups had been altered to exaggerate her facial features. Critics argued that the edits dehumanized her appearance and reinforced stereotypes targeting Black women. The controversy drew national media attention and condemnation from civil rights groups.

These are just a few cases, and unfortunately, there are more like them.

This is important because trust isn’t just about what we say. It’s about what we show and how we show it.