- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I am confused as all hell about this article, and the ensuing pack of self justifying dribble presented as serious commentary.
An artist has come up with a way to take one completely and utterly fake representation of reality (ie. modern digital photographs), and transform it into a complete and utterly fake representation.
The artist, and likely the artist's patrons (er customers) likes this representation, perhaps even thinks that this representation more closely matches the 'real' version of their child, or of their aspirations for this child. Bright eyes as a mark of intelligence, rosy cheeks indicating health, tidy hair representing a child who is groomed and cared for by their clan.
Catherine Price goes on about 'perfectly natural' this and that without recognizing that there is absolutely nothing natural about a photograph.
Representations of reality are not reality. And the beauty or dare I say even greatness in a representation does not come from how closely it matches our absurdly limited ability to perceive reality.
Catherine's post, and most of the comments which follow, sound exactly, and I mean _exactly_, like the commentary which the 'educated' have always used to dismiss new forms of expression which offended their tiny little world views.
See for example the reaction of the 'critics' to the impressionist salons.
For some values of 'most,' I assume that most of the commentators would find nothing odd about an article praising tattoos and piercings. They are just a form of expression, and etc, and yet someone using Photoshop to change how kids look is damned all over?
"I'm going to use this as an example of what not to do in my next Photoshop class, "The one that will haunt my dreams."
I find sheep, yes I say sheep, and little but sheep for just as far as the router can route.
