Living in media-saturated cultures, we are surrounded by perfected images of “beauty.” The debate continues over whether or not advertisers should disclose the extent to which their images are digitally manipulated. Valérie Boyer, a member of the French parliament is proposing legislation in France that would require digitally altered photographs to be labeled.
What would happen if we knew just how much work went into creating perfected media images? Would it affect how we see ourselves and each other? When we look at a painting, it’s easy to know it’s art, but what about a photograph? With all the work that goes into making an image look the way it does — is it more similar to a painting than we think? Is there a point when a photograph really becomes a digital painting?
Here’s what one expert photo retoucher said in a recent interview:
I don’t see photographs as being authentic or real. I see them as being mechanical and non-human. And, particularly unhuman. So in that I extend the inhuman qualities of it, I’m extending the mechanical, inhuman, mechanically optical not humanly optical qualities of photos.
How much digital altering goes on?
Every picture has been worked on some twenty to thirty rounds. They are perfected to death. You should just look through the magazines and consider it. And all that is there to alter your mind, alter your conception of what physical beauty is, what the possibility of obtaining it is, and what the means of obtaining it are.
And just how far does retouching go to disguise itself?
What you’re looking for, as a retoucher, is a broom, something that covers your tracks, someway of obscuring where you’ve been. The first thing people take out is bloodshot eyes — that’s the last thing I take out. That’s the last thing I just wipe. Because that just makes it look retouched. … The fact that I leave it in makes it seem more real.
This interview is part of a film project exploring unrealizable standards of physical perfection. As a filmmaker I’m interested in using media to examine other media images and in opening up discussion. My goal is to expose the “man behind the curtain” or the artists behind the industry and to better understand how notions of perfection are constructed. But what happens when we meet the “man behind the curtain?” It’s easy to point fingers, but I believe this is a more complicated debate. We are all people doing this. Anthropologically, I wonder why we are creating perfect images of ourselves. Is this just a dangerous fantasy? Or is it serving some kind of purpose?
To explore these questions from a variety of perspectives, I’m creating a series of short films under the collective title Body Typed — and very much welcome thoughts from members of the AAUW.
Jesse Erica Epstein is a filmmaker and youth media educator living in Brooklyn. For more information about this film project, visit http://jessedocs.blogspot.com. To find out how to order a Body Typed DVD for schools and groups, visit www.newday.com/films/Body_Typed.html.
