The magazine cover above caught my eye for several reasons, but mainly for what is missing…
My first thought was an excited, “Hey that’s Amy Adams!”. Next up was an enthusiastic, “I love her!” And my third bit of inner dialogue was a confused/befuddled, “…hey…where’s her left leg?”
Yes, friends its true. If you examine this month’s cover of Interview Magazine you will find a stunning and cheery Amy Adams staring back at you, but regrettably she appears sans limb.
As far as I can tell, Ms. Adams’ leg has been removed for no apparent reason, and no apparent attempt has been made to hide that fact. Certainly two legs are better than one–especially Amy Adams’–and no design principle or theory I can think of mandates one-legged gals on magazine covers. But even more puzzling to me is that no attempt has been made to cover up the obvious Photoshop faux-pas. At least put in the outline of a leg or a shadow that suggests a pair of shoes instead of one lonely high-heel. Why would someone do this to a perfectly good photo that is featured on the cover of a major magazine!?!
But I digress…My real point in bringing this to your attention was to find our your thoughts on the issue of doctoring photographs in Photoshop, et.al. that will appear in print. Are there any designer’s ethics that should come into play when wreaking havoc on a celebrity’s image? Since almost no magazine photo is completely unaltered, is it fair to say that photography as a representative reality have lost their validity? How does the presentation of reality created by the designer influence the “real world”? Is it the responsibility of the designer to be factual in visual presentation? Or is the whole point of what we do to manipulate the visual to suit our objective? Just some food for thought and devil’s-advocate-thinking…I will be interested to see what you guys have to say here…
Below is a link to some articles about ethical questions that surround photoshopping:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/digitalphotoethics/The_Ethics_of_Digital_Photo_Manipulation.htm
The first link below is a blog post about advertisements using this digital fakery, and the second is a thoughtful rebuttal post from a second blog.
http://www.youthedesigner.com/2007/12/14/photoshop-abuse/
http://michellearc.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/photoshop-abuse-on-advertisement/
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[...] I was reminded recently of an old Peter Cook and Dudley Moore routine (which would be judged hopelessly P.I. today) in which a one-legged man interviews to play the part of Tarzan in an upcoming movie. The casting director is “sympathetic”: “Now your left leg, I like. I’ve got nothing against your left leg….the trouble is, neither do you.” A student of mine, and fellow magazine aficionado, Jason Hartsel, writes about a similar omission on our class blog. [...]