The Image Fulgurator is a device for physically manipulating photographs. People’s great trust in their photographic reproductions of reality was what motivated von Bismarck to develop this device. It intervenes when a photo is being taken, without the photographer being able to detect anything. The manipulation is only visible on the photo afterwards.

In principle, the Fulgurator can be used anywhere where there is another camera nearby that is using a flash. It operates via a kind of reactive flash projection that enables an image to be projected on an object exactly at the moment when someone else is photographing it. The intervention is unobtrusive because it takes only a few milliseconds. Every photo another photographer takes of an object at which the Fulgurator is also aimed is affected by the manipulation. Hence visual information can be smuggled unnoticed into the images of others.

At sacred or popular locations, or those having a political connotation, an intervention can be particularly effective. Von Bismarck was recently staging interventions at Barack Obama's speech in front of Berlin's Siegessäule on July 24, 2008 (by projecting a cross) and at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing (by flashing 'the Magritte dove' on the Mao Zedong portrait).