A photograph showing a collection of houses from a bird's eye view has been shared by several users on the internet with a false claim that it shows a real village in Germany that is shaped like a human fingerprint.
However, we found that it was not a real photograph nor was it a representation of a village in Germany. The viral image was of a 3D graphic created by an artist called Jacob Eisinger for the February 2015 cover of Modus Magazine.
CLAIM
The caption shared with the viral image said, "This is a german village shaped like fingerprint."
The same caption was used by several other Facebook and Twitter users.
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Photo: Facebook/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
On conducting a reverse image search on the viral photo, we found the same image in a different orientation.
The image was created by a German artist called Jacob Eisinger for the February 2015 cover of MODUS magazine. According to Eisinger's LinkedIn page, he is "a designer/illustrator focusing on 3D illustration and 3D type".
A link to the magazine can be found here.
(Photo: issuu/Screenshot)
The image was also shared by Eisinger, along with images of other artwork, on their Behance profile.
Talking about the MODUS magazine cover, the artist had said, "For the February issue of Modus Magazine I was asked to create a satellite picture kind of artwork showing a fingerprint shaped city to illustrate “the human touch.” Experimenting with cloner objects and dynamic texturing it was a great challenge to figure out the best way to create a crowded place like a city."
Eisinger had also shared images of process involved in making the final 3D graphic.
The artists also shared the photo on his Instagram handle where he used hashtags like #cgi, #3d and #digitalart.
We also found that the image was viral before in 2018 and was debunked by the fact-checking organisation Snopes.
Evidently, a computer-generated 3D image was shared by social media users as an actual photograph of a village in Germany.
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