Is retouching = fake??? by Carole Guevin

Is retouching = fake???

I am awed and disgusted at the same time.

Nothing to do with the power of Photoshop... we all know how that software is capable of supporting the most audacious photographic manipulations.

But it seems to me, that when it comes to fashion and how being normal is now out of the question...

Even for the slender (skinny?) models that are challenged to portray beauty standards (sic), which btw, are all, but attainable for most of us, non-model women.

Is the way to go, to alter reality???

I mean, have we got to a point that we are profoundly incapable of supporting the mere sight of imperfections?

I have been tinkering on trying to assess this new virtual border that is photography retouching for some time now.

Nothing to do with the talent involved..

I guess, this newly found example, is the drop that pushes me over the edge.

So, what is it that warrants these manipulations in the first place?

How and when and why was this new ipso facto established?

Why do we have to see this way, anyway???

Could it be that since in our day and age we don't butcher or harvest the food we eat..

That we buy our food from marketing prepped nicely packaged rows and sterilized cellophaned kept counters..

Are we more and more, pushed and steered to distance and remote ourselves from what is real???

Is it because we enhance and correct weak lighting, level colors, sharpen or blur or clone in new perspectives to enhance the background and subject that we are warranting (endorsing) all kinds of fake model photography?

The debate is certainly wide open! What do you make of this?

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ndlr: Mau Sandoval let me in on the Dove - Evolution Commercial which is a campaign by Dove and Ogilvy with videos/ads demonstrating the same issue of retouching and how girls are trying to match beautifulness.

-> next: It's all about being creative

Editorials by Carole Guevin