DIGITAL IMAGING AND ADVERTISING

Exploring Beauty In Digital Imaging And Advertising

Exploring Beauty In Digital Imaging And Advertising

Historical Image Manipulation

Many people think that the manipulation of images started with the invention of Photoshop, but there have been fake photographs since the invention of photography.

A "Fairy" photograph from 1917 from Cottingley, England by Elise Wright and Frances Griffiths.

In 1917, Elise Wright, age 16, and her cousin Frances Griffiths, age 10, used a simple camera to produce what they claimed were photographs of fairies in their garden in Cottingley, England (above).

Arthur Conon Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, believed these photos to be real, and wrote pamphlets attesting to their truthfulness. Even today some people believe these photographs are real.

At about the same time, photographic composites of different images were created by commercial photographic studios to bring family members together into one picture when they were not together in reality for the portrait session (right).

Notice that the three people on the left in the image appear to be floating in mid air in this photographic portrait of the Daquilla family from the early 20th century by A. Werner and Sons in New York.

They were apparently cut out of other photos and pasted on top of a photo of the woman at right and re-photographed in a composite image (Barnouw, 2008).

Exploring Digital Imaging and Advertising

Images of female bodies are everywhere. Women—and their body parts—sell everything from food to cars. Popular film and television actresses are becoming younger, taller and thinner. Some have even been known to faint on the set from lack of food. Women's magazines are full of articles urging that if they can just lose those last twenty pounds, they'll have it all—the perfect marriage, loving children, great sex, and a rewarding career.

Why are standards of beauty being imposed on women, the majority of whom are naturally larger and more mature than any of the models? The roots, some analysts say, are economic. By presenting an ideal difficult to achieve and maintain, the cosmetic and diet product industries are assured of growth and profits. And it's no accident that youth is increasingly promoted, along with thinness, as an essential criterion of beauty. If not all women need to lose weight, for sure they're all aging, says the Quebec Action Network for Women's Health in its 2001 report Changements sociaux en faveur de la diversité des images corporelles (Lackey, 2008). And, according to the industry, age is a disaster that needs to be dealt with.

The stakes are huge. On the one hand, women who are insecure about their bodies are more likely to buy beauty products, new clothes, and diet aids. It is estimated that the diet industry alone is worth anywhere between 40 to 100 billion (U.S.) a year selling temporary weight loss (90 to 95% of dieters regain the lost weight). On the other hand, research indicates that exposure to images of thin, young, air-brushed female bodies is linked to depression, loss of self-esteem and the development of unhealthy eating habits in women ...