Month: October 2017

In this text, Fontcuberta explores the use of photo manipulation within current media. He primarily investigates advertisements and campaigns that Keira Knightly has been a part of.  Fontcuberta looks at the King Authur promotional shots, where Knightly was starring as Queen Guinevere, the original prints look ‘sexy’ in her strips of leather that covered part of her torso; however, in the final images Knightly’s breasts were considerably enlarged thanks to ‘didgital technology’ in order to further sexualise the actress.

Fontcuberta then scrutinizes the actress’ Chanel campaign.  The first images were fairly tame, as Kneigtly covered her breasts with a bowler hat.  The following images were more revealing and Fontcuberta notes that yet again, her breasts were retouched. Other retouching controversies were also mentioned in this text such as the French Presidents love handle removal, this demonstrates that the retouching culture is not exclusive to females.  Fontcuberta believes that “corrective’ digital retouching or ‘adjustment’ has become standard practice, a kind of default post-production process that is taken for granted.  So, corrective digital retouching is not exclusive to sexy models and actresses but is standard practice for celebrity images.

The artist, Alison Jackson has taken a comedic approach to this new norm, in which celebrity images are impossibly beautiful.  She simulates scenes of celebrities in scatological situations, such as Madonna ironing her underwear and George W. Bush appearing baffled by a Rubik’s cube. Unlike many other fake celebrity images, they are not ‘crude cut-and-paste’ jobs, Jackson takes authentic images with doubles.

Fontcuberta also notes that because of the advancement in image manipulation, ‘it is no longer necessary to resort to special diets, the gym, prosthetics or plastic surgery to achieve the obligatory perfect body.’  This is especially relevant in a case such as Knightly’s as the vast majority of images of her being manipulated and it has therefore altered the opinion on her appearance.  It is interesting to look at French artist Orlan’s work as she subjected her self-portraits to ‘surgical operations’ in photoshop, in order to comply with what was seen as beautiful.  Eventually, she layered all of the features together to create what Fontcuberta describes as ‘supreme beauty’ but this of course failed, and he described the result as a ‘shocking monstrosity’.

Manipulation had become accepted to an extent in celebrity photographs, as the public know that ‘photos are ‘treated with great care’ (manipulated) in one way or another.’  Yet on July 30th, 2006 a photo of Kiera Knightly shocked readers as there was a clear element missing from the image – her nipple.  This sparked complaint letters from readers with one stating, ‘imagine photographs of soldiers – it doesn’t matter which war – was retouched and instead of guns, they held a bunch of roses or lilies.  That would be falsified information, wouldn’t it? Well, it’s the same thing.’  Fontcuberta argues to this statement that ‘celebrity photos constitute a separate genre; they are not documentary or news… They are portraits often with artistic aspirations of public figures.’  It is defiantly more acceptable for portraits to be edited and it is seen as unethical to manipulate documentary images, but society is starting to question this.  After complaints companies such as Asos have stopped using Photoshop to edit out features such as stretch marks on their models.  If society keeps questioning the medias’ use of editing software then we may see more changes within the advertising industry.

Changing Places: The. Rebranding of Photography as Contemporary Art

Alexandra Moschovi

In this text, Moschovi explores how over recent decades photography has overcome its stigma and has been now been accepted as contemporary art.  “Somebody like Bill Brandt for example, we would not collect because he is exclusively a photographer. On the other hand, there are many artists to whom a camera is just a natural extension of their activities. They use photography as a part of their sculpture – Richard Long or Hamish Fulton for example – and then we do collect photographs.” Moschovi refers to this quote from Bowness, former director of the Tate Gallery, this quote clearly outlines how photography was less significant to painting and sculpture.  Nowadays, the works are cataloged in an unbiased manner; Moschovi examines why this change has taken place.

She questioned why photographic works had a lowered monopoly rent, ‘the ability to realise a monopoly price for a commodity’, (Harvey 1982) in comparison to sculptures and paintings.  Photography is a discipline that relies on mechanical reproduction, that may be of an original negative or a replica of a print.  Photography ‘contravened the modern art museums fundamental principles’ because of this.  A collection of masterpieces within a museum will ‘enhance the museum’s prestige’ due to having unique, authentic; as a result, the museum will benefit from admission fees; public and private sponsorship deals and or corporate events.  Photography is ‘easily distributed and marketable’ meaning that the monopoly advantages were simply erased.

In order to end the prejudice between contemporary art and photography, the practice needed to be somehow redefined.  The anti-art era in the 1960’s and 1970’s kickstarted photography’s new image.  A shift towards the more mundane, mass-produced artifacts that were before excluded in art was appearing in museums, with artists such as Damien Hurst and Micheal Landy were inspired by Duchamp’s readymades. Here, photography ‘became a mode of documentation and the photograph evidence of presence that could mediate the work in time and space.’  The alleged ‘decriminalisation of art and the graduated collapse of the formal hierarchies between genres and media contested not just the museum’s taxonomic practices of collecting, its technologies of classification and modes of display but also grand narratives, challenging its status of an authoritative engine of legitimising and materialising culture.’  The photographic practice was beginning to become incorporated into the high art world however, there was still a disconnect, photography still lacked the sacredness of an original work and therefore wasn’t seen as monopoly rent.

Photography was finally accepted into the museum when a revelation happened, that photography could be part of the monopoly if there were limited, numbered prints.  This theory meant that photographic images were only deemed modern art if they were taken by an artist, but infarct all work could be celebrated. The idea has ‘provide a convenient solution to the taxonomic headache that the standard accusation of such practices caused museum curators for years…’