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Feb. 24th, 2006 10:36 am[info]maeritrae linked to this and she's right -- it's fascinating. Go to "portfolio" and click on "before/after". It's fun!
Commentary post-hack: The link was lost, but it was a website showing "before" and "after" airbrushing photos for professional modeling.
What fascinates me is not so much the process of retouching. I'm familiar with that; when I did headshot photography in undergrad I did a whole bunch, including editing the spittle out of one of my professor's otherwise perfect photographs of his baby daughter. I mean, there's the usual stuff about body image, blah blah blah, young kids think retouched photos are the ideal, but really, that's not new to me or anyone else.
No, what's interesting is if you go to, say, the fifth photo -- the black man in the pinstripe suite -- the only things being retouched are the people. I suppose to retouch clothes would be considered "false advertising", since that's presumably what the adverts are for, but really. Look at that photo. They even edited the veins on his hand, and yet no wrinkle, flaw, or odd fold of the clothes has been altered at all. We worship the merch, man.
I don't even need to ask when Western culture started collectively loathing its own body. I've traced it in my thesis; from the religious persecutions in Italy outward through Europe, into Cromwell's England and thence, eventually, to the Empire. The modern United States was born* of a bunch of Puritans who were too boring to be tolerated by the English. These are the same kind of people who still followed Cromwell after he banned theatre for seventeen years. What we know as "theatre" didn't even exist in America until 1792 and then only in Boston. We may be a melting pot, but the pot itself is pretty funky, guys.
* After the slaughter of the Native Americans, yes, I know.
Anyway. I don't intend it to be a rant; more than anything I find it an interesting area of study.
And OMG fun to clicky on. :D
Commentary post-hack: The link was lost, but it was a website showing "before" and "after" airbrushing photos for professional modeling.
What fascinates me is not so much the process of retouching. I'm familiar with that; when I did headshot photography in undergrad I did a whole bunch, including editing the spittle out of one of my professor's otherwise perfect photographs of his baby daughter. I mean, there's the usual stuff about body image, blah blah blah, young kids think retouched photos are the ideal, but really, that's not new to me or anyone else.
No, what's interesting is if you go to, say, the fifth photo -- the black man in the pinstripe suite -- the only things being retouched are the people. I suppose to retouch clothes would be considered "false advertising", since that's presumably what the adverts are for, but really. Look at that photo. They even edited the veins on his hand, and yet no wrinkle, flaw, or odd fold of the clothes has been altered at all. We worship the merch, man.
I don't even need to ask when Western culture started collectively loathing its own body. I've traced it in my thesis; from the religious persecutions in Italy outward through Europe, into Cromwell's England and thence, eventually, to the Empire. The modern United States was born* of a bunch of Puritans who were too boring to be tolerated by the English. These are the same kind of people who still followed Cromwell after he banned theatre for seventeen years. What we know as "theatre" didn't even exist in America until 1792 and then only in Boston. We may be a melting pot, but the pot itself is pretty funky, guys.
* After the slaughter of the Native Americans, yes, I know.
Anyway. I don't intend it to be a rant; more than anything I find it an interesting area of study.
And OMG fun to clicky on. :D
