The narcissism created by these technologies is unique. It encourages not just self-absorption, but, more accurately, self-consumption. We become creators and consumers of our own brand. We become enamored by a particular kind of self, a pseudo-self. A self-image controlled in much the same way corporate brands are controlled. Complete with pictures, videos, songs and, most of all, metrics—the number of friends we have, the kinds of friends we have and the kind of associations we have. We endlessly refine, create and consume a digital projection we want others to see. However, we are rarely what we project. This image approximates reality, but it is not reality.
Shane Hipps
Source: relevantmagazine.com
How noble of Dove to expose the dirty tricks that advertisers use to make us feel unsatisfied with our bodies. Yet their campaign had its own little secret. The man responsible for the image retouching of the Dove ads is a legendary digital artist named Pascal Dangin. Insiders describe him as the “photo whisperer” — able to coax unimagined beauty from nearly any image. In an interview with The New Yorker, Dangin was asked about the Dove campaign. Referring the “before [and after]” images he said “Do you know how much retouching was on that? But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.” That’s right, the natural “before” image is as artificial as the “after” image.
Shane Hipps — (2009) Flickering Pixels, Zondervan [pg 97]
I repeat an earlier sentiment: Never. Ever. Believe an image in a magazine/billboard/etc.
