Monday, June 2, 2014

pleasing

Continuing on the idea that even what is regarded as beautiful is not beautiful enough, I took several famous portraits and subjected them to a retouching program. The results were a mixed bag, some of the images were very noticeable, and others were not as successful. One of the things that I noticed in peoples response to the images was that they enjoyed some of the reworked images more than the original. I believe a few people even mistook the altered images as the original. My wife posed the question of why we were more attracted to the newer images. I believe it has a great deal to do with our constantly changing cultural perception of beauty. Throughout a great deal of human history in several cultures, a thicker body was seen as wealthier, healthier, a more suitable mate, and a thinner frame was seen as unsuccessful or malnourished. I can only imagine what other people from other periods in history would think of our current persons of desire.

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