It surprisingly taught me a lot more than that. Throughout my work day I would receive request for several different things which included using a track pad and pen tool to outline anything from jewelry to celebrities. The other request I did was photo retouching. That meant cleaning up skin blemishes, "slimming" figures and correcting skin color. The first few weeks I watched on as the senior digital imager manipulated females to fit societies idea of "perfection". My first major request was Bethany Frankel's summer spread where my assignment was remove the wrinkles and spots on her under eyes and forehead. Following that assignment I received a spread with a Sport Illustrated model who to any eye would think she was a very skinny female. My request we to slim her inner thighs, stomach and arms. I was very uncomfortable completing the request but felt obligated as this had been the field I dreamed of being apart of for so long.
Photographs have consumed my life, I think it is such a powerful tool in society. Yet the media has figured a way to manipulate perfectly normal and healthy human beings into unrealistic figures. These images are seen by thousands of male and female readers daily and give off a perception of wealth, power and privilege. Young generations see these images and want to encompass them, so they wrap themselves into a world that has been digitally manipulated to be glitzier, skinner and ageless.
This worries me as an aspiring fashion and documentary photographer that society cannot trust everything they see. I want to be a photographer who celebrates the beauty of aging and the curve of the female figure. I want to teach woman and men to look at beauty in a different way than how our media presents it.
Believe it or not, go open a magazine, every image, every single image in that magazine has been manipulated in one way or another.
