100% Unretouched Kim Kardashian? Could It Be?

The new issue of Life & Syle magazine features Kim Kardashian, who admits that she has cellulite. Good for her. The magazine says its cover photo is 100% unretouched. Could this be the beginning of a trend? Truth in celebrity journalism? Believe me, I've looked hard at the photo. And I still haven't found any cellulite.--David Schonauer

The POTUS, Shirtless and Photoshopped. Let the Arguments Begin!

Washington Monthly The Washingtonian has a new cover featuring the President of the United States shirtless. The web is abuzz. Is this the proper way to portray the nation's elected leader? But as this blogger points out, there is another issue: The image has been heavily manipulated. The cover is based on a paparazzi photo of then President-Elect Obama during his vacation in Hawaii in December. In the Washington Monthly Washingtonian version, the color of his swimming trunks has been changed, the background has been blacked out, and Obama's skin appears to be more golden in tone.
    So we have a couple of issues to debate.
    Should the magazine have used the picture? I do not see why not. The image speaks to a particular point: This politician is a new kind of celebrity. Some critics say that Washington Monthly the Washingtonian was pandering to the new administration. If so, it didn't behave any worse than all the magazines and newspapers that used to run those photo-op shots of President Bush in his cowboy hat "clearing brush."
    The manipulation I am not in favor of. It's one thing to make the point that President Obama is a celebrity, but quite another to treat images of him as if he were in the same magnitude of celebrity as Britney Spears.
    Memo to Self: That kind of trivialization should be avoided, no matter the temptation.
    Memo to President Obama: Stay off the Tonight Show, or this is what you'll get.
    Let's break this issue down even further, for the sake of discussion: What if the magazine had simply blacked out the backgorund and left his shorts and skin unretouched? I don't think I'd have much of a problem with it. (We've got to put cover lines somewhere!)  —David Schonauer

Eeeny-Meeny Chili-Beany: Best Ghost Photographs

May April Fool's Day is getting started early. This story lists the best photos of ghosts ever made. Ever since the medium of photography was invented, spiritual mediums have tried to put its supposed veracity to work in the hope of documenting the dear departed. Some of these attempts have become famous in ghost-hunting circles. The picture above, for instance, was made in 1966 by a retired clergyman in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. Said clergyman was simply shooting the staircase, but when his film was developed, a spectral apparition was apparent. According to legend, experts from Kodak examined the negative and found that it hadn't been tampered with. Please vote: Real ghost, or hoax? Any other good ghost photos I should know about?--David Schonauer

Kim Kardashian, Before and After

Most of us know that all non-candid photographs of celebrities are retouched. We understand this implicitly because the said celebrities never allow the un-retouched images to be published. We just take the perfection as a matter of technological reality, then continue our binge-purge diets. So it might have been a public service when, for a few moments, the website for Complex magazine published an un-retouched photo of Kim Kardashian. Soon, that version was replaced by the retouched version, which lightened and tightened the reality TV star. Some astute observers were able to get both images to compare (above). Yes, it might have been a public service. More likely a mistake, though. The images are credited to Mathias Kurka/Corbis.--David Schonauer

Obama in Images: New White House Photo Staff Named

Pete Souza, the official White House photographer for Barack Obama, has named Alice Gabriner (left) has the new White House photography editor. Grabiner formerly was the chief photography editor for Time magazine, a job she took after longtime photo director MaryAnne Golon left the magazine. Grabiner's new title will be Deputy Director of the White House Photography Office.
   Souza also told the National Press Photographers Association that veteran photo editor Jennifer Poggi and Washington photojournalist Rick McKay would be joining the White House photo staff. Poggi was formerly on the staff of U.S. News and World Report; McKay has shot for the Cox newspaper chain's Washington bureau for many years.--David Schonauer

Does Photo Reouching Ruin Lives?

The website of the New York Times has a video opinion piece concerning the effects that retouched photographs have on women's body image that is worth taking a look at. There are some interesting interviews with digital retouchers, who seem to agree that the work they do promotes false ideas about physical perfect. It's probably not news to the readers of a photography blog that essentially every image in every fashion or celebrity magazine is retouched. Should there be a law against such practices? (The video piece begins by noting that in France such laws have been considered.) Should magazines have to tell readers which images have been retouched? One solution mentioned in the piece is that magazines should include the names of retouchers in its photo credits. I know plenty of retouchers who would love to get credit alongside the photographers who take the pictures--and plenty of photographers who would hate that. But maybe that is the solution. Thoughts? --David Schonauer

News Alert: Fashion Mag Photoshops Cover Image!

A new documentary screened at the Sundance Film Festival has an explosive revelation: Vogue magazine drastically maniuplated a photo of actress Sienna Miller for the cover of its September 2007 issue.
    The film, called simply "The September Issue," reveals that a shot of Miller's head was attached to a different shot of her body.
    the whole blogosphere is going to erupt over this...partly because everyone is looking for some piece of news to come out of Sundance, and partly because it's sort of open season on Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and partly because Perez Hilton always puts down Miller. (In the film, Wintour apparently says Miller is "toothy.") And it's always fun to call out magazines over retouching.
    But of course we all know that all the fashion magazines do this. Let me suggest that attaching heads from one shot bodies in another is just sort of standard practice nowadays. Fashion is about fantasy, not reality.--David Schonauer

Amazing Images: Model Ages, No Photoshop

I just saw this story in French Vogue, and it is a masterpiece of skilled photography--as in old-school amazing. Shot by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, the story follows model Eniko Mihalik as she ages :

From young girl

to a 20-year-old

to a 30-year-old

to a 40-year-old

to a 50-year-old

to a 60-year-old. Understand, Eniko is in fact a young woman--not a teen, and not yet in her 30s. The transformation in the images was done with light, makeup, and styling. I'm sooo tired of those "aging" photos done with Photoshop. This is much more compelling, don't you think?--David Schonauer

Kristol and Hamell Debate Iraq War Imagery

There was a very interesting discussion today in New York about the role of war imagery and how if affects the views of the public. Sponsored by the Independent Film Channel and held at Michael's restaurant (a favorite media hangout), the forum covered all aspects of the state of the media today. When the discussion turned to public access to war imagery, conservative pundit William Kristol squared off with liberal pundit Pete Hamill. Hamill said the public should have unfiltered access to images of the war in Iraq in order to form a realistic idea about the human costs of the conflict. Kristol said that Americans were capable of understanding what happens in war without seeing "blood and brains." Hamill held that "there is no sense of whata reality is on the ground by editing out corpses. Kristol said it was a matter of taste.  Do you think Americans have seen a fair, realistic depiction of the war? Or have the military and mainstream media censored the truth from us?--David Schonauer

No Picture, No Title

Blogging from a government-owned computer while waiting around at a lower-Manhattan courthouse on jury duty, I don't have the usual browser options to post a picture or story links (nor the usual time -- I've already been booted off once) ... but I'm compelled to comment on a story in the Style section of today's New York Times -- The Sum of Your Facial Parts -- that begs the question: What's so funny 'bout peace, love and natural beauty?

The story describes a new computer software that "enhances" photos by conforming faces to a scientific algorithm of beauty -- altering such factors as symmetry, distance between facial parts, and other geometric things. Though designed mainly for cosmetic uses such as advertising photography, the implications are downright scary. Among the sample photos shown with the story, one set demonstrates that a beauty like Brigette Bardot loses her "individuality" in the process. One commentator in the piece says, "There is a whole generation of girls growing up who think it's normal not to look the way they really look." We would have more to say, but ... we're about to get booted off this computer again! Check out the piece.  -- Jack Crager