Artwork by Polish Artist Shared as 'Frozen Elephant Mountain'

The image of 'elephant mountain' was created by Polish artist Mirekis, who specialises in surreal photography.

The image of the 'frozen elephant mountain' is created by surreal photography artist Mirekis from Poland. 

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A picture with the caption "frozen elephant mountain" is being shared on the internet to claim that an icy mountain cliff resembled an elephant. However, the location was not mentioned in the claim.

We found that the claim is false and the photo was made up of several images and was created by surreal photography artist from Poland –Mirekis.

CLAIM

The image shared by username 'incredible pics' has garnered over 12,000 likes at the time of writing this article.

An archived version of the tweet can be found here.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

Several users have shared the same claim and the archived versions can be accessed here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

Upon a reverse image search of the picture, we found the same image on Pinterest, an image sharing platform, with the caption, 'Elephant Mountain mirekis' Metal Poster Print - Mirekis | Displate'.

(Source: Pinterest/Screenshot)

We then searched on Google with the keyword 'Elephant Mountain mirekis' and found the photo on 500px, an online photo-sharing platform, where the artist 'Mirekis' had uploaded the image in 2018. The tags used in the photo were "surreal", "photomanipulation", "fantasy", among others.

We found the image on his Facebook page in the album 'Animals manipulation' and the photo was uploaded on 11 December 2018.

We found the image on album 'Animals manipulation' on Mirekis' Facebook account

Source: Facebook/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)

Speaking to fact-checking website Snopes in 2018, Mirekis said he used two images from Pixabay and Wikimedia to create the image using editing software.

He said, "Elephant’s Mountain" was a composite of several different images. The foreground of the image, which shows a field and a few scattered bushes, was taken from a photograph of a Rocca Malatestiana, a fortress on a mountain range in Italy."

Clearly, a digitally created photo made its way to the internet with the claim that it is a frozen mountain cliff that looks like an elephant.

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