Set Photoshop to Thinspiration

[essentialsaltes]

It would be easy to make fun of fatness or cosplay, but I wish to probe the philosophical question:

At what point does a photo of you become not a photo of you?

Here is a retouched photo of me from New Year's.

Comments

[richardabecker.livejournal.com]

It’s a slippery slope, to coin a cliché, between saying, “Hey, do that cool thing again so I can get a shot!” and “That photo is nothing like the actual person!” Either way, it is not real. At least half of the photos in everyone’s picture album are homemade illusions that don’t really show us what a moment in time was actually like. Not unless we all just happened to repeatedly turn and smile and wave at the same person at the same time, and that person just happened to have a camera in their hands, ready to shoot. In that case, it’s refreshingly spontaneous and weirdly psychotic, all at the same time. Artifice is an inherent part of most photography — it’s only a question of degree. Those photos in our albums are meant to capture the feeling and overall look of a moment. They’re not plaster impressions, they’re sketches.

(Even a candid photo only includes the people and objects the photographer kept in frame and in the focal depth, and the actions that happened as the shutter opened and shut, and the angle that the artist chose to shoot from. They’re selected and culled. In other words, “candid” is not candid. And I would know: I was a regular at the original Fang Club at Orsini’s from opening night until closing night at another venue (Café Luna, I think), fully two years, and the official club photographer took all kinds of shots that seemed to include me at the time—but in fact were always rigorously framed and cropped to exclude me from my groups of friends, even when I was in the middle of the bunch. You’d never know I was there at all, unless you asked people who knew me and were also there, such as the club’s own promoter…)

Even the moment you choose to snap the photo is artifice. Unless you shoot every goddamn thing all the time in a continuous lunatic stream of consciousness, and print/publish every picture good or bad, you’re controlling what the viewer will see. You’re “faking it.”

Many times, I’ve actually seen the opposite of the situation you’re describing: People who insist that if you don’t choose the ugly angle and bad lighting because it’s “honest” (honestly unflattering) and “candid,” then you’re putting up photographic “lies.” There are a lot of people in my immediate circle of acquaintance who become quite agitated if a shot looks nicely posed and makes the subject look as attractive as possible, instead of being “real.” (Apparently because the world is one fugly place.) Any Photoshop work only increases their anxious fury at the “fakery.” To them, photography should be face-on angles, available light or washed-out flash strobing, no retouching, no photographer’s perspective in the shot. They want the security camera/DMV picture school of photography.

Oddly, to me, those photos don’t represent the world as I actually see it at all. That’s probably just my problem, but I find that joyless, non-interpretive photos are like a child’s vague drawing of what my eyes actually present to me, with all the inaccuracy that implies. Probably I just see things wrong.

My experience and knowledge of the art of photography is that all of it is, in fact, an art. There is also photojournalism, which is fine, but the problem with applying its standards to snapshots of our lives is this: If you’re standing around taking photos of things, you’re probably pausing to have people pose for them. If not, you’re probably not enjoying the event or situation yourself, but are “the participant with the camera.” Since most of us would rather enjoy that Kodak moment directly, without a viewfinder glued to our eye socket, a lot of photo ops are lost. (Since we’re not professional wedding photographers or photojournalists.) Be there, or be the guy with the camera.

I suppose I’m trying to say this: Unless you were actually there and saw everything clearly for yourself (good luck with that, btw), you must still trust the photographer to shoot the subject “honestly.” You’re letting them decide what you will see and how you will see it. Obviously, the only way to have a direct experience of a phenomenon is to experience it yourself directly. That’s not photography.

All of that said, yeah, that’s a ridiculous amount of Photoshopping and it’s completely misleading bullshit.