What input should the person who was photographed have?
Adele has been very public about being comfortable with how she is.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Digitally Manipulating Photos
There are some stories hitting the internet discussing whether the cover photo of Adele on Vogue was Photoshopped to make her look thinner. What do you think? Is it acceptable (and expected) on fashion magazines? Where do you draw the line? Would this be acceptable for a news magazine?
What input should the person who was photographed have?
Adele has been very public about being comfortable with how she is.
What input should the person who was photographed have?
Adele has been very public about being comfortable with how she is.
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I think that it has become quite well-known and acceptable for fashion magazines, such as Vogue, to heavily Photoshop the celebrities they feature in their covers. At the end of the day, fashion magazines (as the fashion industry in general) are trying to sell an illusion (not reality) of what beauty is. The industry tells the viewers what their definition of beauty is, rather than showcasing what beauty really is. This is the biggest difference between fashion magazines and news magazines. The former reports an illusion of reality, the latter reports reality. I think it falls on the readers to use their common sense to differentiate between the illusion of what the fashion industry defines as beautiful and what beauty really means for the rest of us who are not living in the entertainment/fashion bubble. Does this make their alleged use of photoshop on Adele acceptable? No.
ReplyDeleteI feel that very few artists right now have stood up for accepting themselves as who they are, even if they do not fit the “mold” of skinny, anorexic models. That’s what made us fall in love with Adele. The fact that she has become successful based on her talent, and not her physical appearance.
I think that fashion magazines such as Vogue and others often have a lot more leeway in using Photoshop to enhance pictures. But I think there's a big difference between tweaking a few things, and completely trying to distort that something looks like. In the case of Adele, she is a heavier-set woman and is happy with how she looks, but this magazine is deliberately trying to make her look skinnier, because of the common conception that skinnier is better.
ReplyDeleteAs to the question, what about news magazines? The same issues have come up with news publications as well. Last summer, for example, Time Magazine ran a cover with Michele Bachmann that was part of a photoshoot of head shots. They chose one that deliberately made her look "crazy" or "delusional." Just as a reporter can tweak their writing in an unethical way to push an idea that may or may not be true, the same goes for photographs. Just as with writing, the pictures used should accurately reflect the truth of what happened, and not be tweaked to portray any kind of agenda - whether that be political in the case of Bachmann, or an idea of what beauty should be, in the case of this Adele photo. With multimedia becoming the norm, whether it's written, video, or a still photo, ethical principles should always be maintained.
I think it is expected that fashion magazines use Photoshop to make a perfect cover. The objective is not to tell the truth. It is to sell magazines and probably more importantly, sell the products inside for other companies that pay hefty prices for advertising in premier magazines like Vogue. I usually take those pictures with a grain of salt. There's always some minor out-roar when a well-established magazine cheats reality and essentially admits to lying to their consumers. It's wrong in my opinion but accepted. Adele's image that she sells contradicts the very idea of Vogue editing that picture of the grammy-winning artist.
ReplyDeleteI don't think a news magazine should use Photoshop or any other distorting program. If the photographer can create an illusion or feeling with the lighting and other aspects of the environment, that is just like writing a story from a specific angle. But to digitally alter a photo goes against core news values. There is a difference between deciding what to present and changing what is presented.
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ReplyDeleteI saw this article about Adele and I actually could not tell if the cover was really Photoshopped or not. Despite this ambiguity, I think it is completely expected for fashion magazines like Vogue to do something like that. However, I do not think that using Photoshop to such a large extent should be acceptable. Any manipulation of reality, whether in image or print, would be completely unethical for a regular news magazine, yet most people do not judge fashion magazines with the same standard. I say that fashion Photoshop is expected, but this is coming from someone who was has learned about how the fashion industry works and has heard of other extreme Photoshop makeovers. However, I think that for the sake of the naive reader, who sees Vogue on the newsstand next to other magazines like the New Yorker and may assume they are both telling and showing real stories, fashion magazines should not be allowed free reign with Photoshop. I do think small alterations, such as blotting out blemishes or things like should be permissible for fashion magazines only, because it is basically makeup. But things that would require dramatic surgery if the person was changed to look like that in real life (like shaving pounds off of cover models), is egregious. No one would give a celebrity a different hairstyle using digital tools, so why the industry thinks it is acceptable to trim weight digitally is a mystery.
DeleteI heard on news broadcasts about Adele that she essentially had no control over the final cover image, but I think cover models should be allowed to decide how they are presented to the world. Fashion magazines have a right to manipulate their hired models however they want to, in order to present the magazine however they would like, but the people they are featuring, not hired workers, ought to retain their own rights too.
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ReplyDeleteI think that when it comes to fashion magazines like Vogue, a certain amount of photo manipulation is expected. People are essentially buying the magazine to see a certain representation of beauty. I think that most of those people are aware that the images they are paying to see are not entirely representative of reality. As someone who enjoys buying and reading magazines like Vogue on a regular basis, it doesn’t upset me when I see that they have enhanced the way someone looks for their cover or inside for their fashion spreads.
ReplyDeleteUnlike Time magazine or Newsweek, Vogue is read, in part, for the very fact that it presents an “ideal” for people to aspire to. This presentation of a manipulated “ideal” is where things get tricky. I think that magazines, especially those that are aimed at young women, need to be careful when it comes to the extent that they alter their images of women. Too much photo manipulation has undoubtedly affected the way a lot of girls and women think and feel about their bodies. Fashion magazines walk a fine line when it comes to photo manipulation and must be aware that too much manipulation promotes a completely unrealistic and unattainable idea of beauty that can seriously impact the way young women feel about themselves.