I think this article makes a few good points. One of which we talked about during class, giving credit. The photographer is often credited with a photograph in a magazine, but why not the retoucher. I know this focuses on retouching in relationship to body image, but think about food retouching too. Most times food photography isnt even the real food (sometimes for time issues) but regardless. Taco Bell photographs look far different than the actual product.
Is this "wrong" too? Is any photo manipulating "wrong" whether its a models skin of the surface of a cheeseburger?
I agree with the narrator of the video that in the very least the retoucher should be credited, if they are not going to talk about the extent of the retouch. I wonder what a magazine would look like if nothing was retouched or photoshopped and everything relied on the reality of the photograph.
Sex, Lies and Photoshop
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This video is so disturbing to me– no wonder our perception of beauty and perfection is so distorted. It's because what we're seeing is not real!!
Interning at an ad agency last summer I got to see a re-toucher at work. I sat with him and watched while he transformed the buns of a hamburger into a perfect semi-circle. He made sure the ketchup dripped perfectly from the patty and that the angle of the pickle was just right. I didn't really know what to think after seeing him transform a raw image of what I thought was a pretty good looking burger to begin with into this flawless object. I do remember feeling like it was cheating...like we were lying to people.
But, do people really care? Do they care that the images they see in advertisements never match up to what they get in reality? People still buy burgers despite the fact that the burgers they get don't resemble the products advertised.
Maybe we've grown desensitized to it?
I think outlawing or putting regulations on retouching would be alot messier than it initially seems. So much about an image could be considered fiction, even down to the angle or lighting of the original photograph. How would you go about determining objective standards for what constitutes an acceptable representation of reality? Straight on, eye-level, actual size, shot only under 150 lumens?
In fact, It could be argued that the nature of a photograph will always be a sort of fiction in being a representation once removed from reality. A photograph immortalizes a pure visual instant in time, an opportunity not afforded to us in our everyday perception, at least unaided by technology or perception-altering substances. I've often been told "that photo doesn't look like you" for the reason that no one has the ability to indefinitely sustain a clear unchanging visual instance of me for more than a few seconds.
If we're going to debate over reality in photography, I'm not sure retouching can or should be regulated.
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