Oh dear, that’s twice in the same month! The gorgeous Dita Von Teese is on the cover of another edition of Harpers Bazaar for February 2013, this time Harpers Bazaar Malaysia and has suffered the same de-featuring airbrushing as she did for the Singapore edition.
Both photos must be from the same photoshoot (same hair, same nails, same makeup). She looks fabulous but it’s such a shame that she’s had all the character and expression taken out of her face once again. She kind of looks like a mannequin. Why on earth do magazines insist on airbrushing photos so much?
Perhaps we should start a campaign for magazines to ban extreme airbrushing…
P.S Thanks for pointing it out guys – both magazines use the same head-shot stuck on 2 different bodies (see the proof here) - why do that????
Source and copyright: Harpers Bazaar Malaysia
Now that you (don’t really) mention it, wonder if our idea of feminine “perfection” has been influenced by Asian images? I am totally with you in the anti airbrushing area, she is so darned perfect in her own way, it’s really a shame! I am generally for a bit more realism in Fashion…..
I know – airbrushing out the odd zit or bit of cellulite is one thing, but she looks like Barbie Von Teese in this photo!
Ugh, I’m so sick of all the overdone airbrushing! They also did some weird stuff with her arms – she has slender arms, but they’re not like the Barbie-esque arms featured here.
Dita Von Teese is absolutely gorgeous in person – what was Harper’s thinking?
she looks like she’s made of plastic doesn’t she? I wonder what DVT makes of the finished photos…? Might drop her a tweet and see what she thinks! She *might* answer…?
It actually looks like exactly the same headshot, pasted onto two different body pics! This crap is exasperating—even beautiful aren’t good enough to be shown as-is.
disappointing isn’t it?
@Goldie: you are correct! I was thinking the same thing and verified it in photoshop. Amazing that they magazines are still pasting the heads onto other bodies – we don’t even know if it’s her body.
OMG – really?? Do they really do that? I find it really hard to believe that they didn’t manage to get 2 different photos of DVT which were good enough for 2 covers. Astonishing!
You’re absolutely right guys – I tried the photoshop thing too – you can see the proof in this pic I did: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=523015317720921&set=a.430718226950631.91724.184046158284507&type=1&theater
Dear Mary, I have a wild guess: people just cannot stand raw reality! Before photoshop, both models as photographers had to be clean because there was no retouching at all. Nowadays, with all such technology (there are cameras that automatically “repair” bad photos …) any crap can become a great image. Makes me nostalgic for the old Masters (painters) whose marvelous works were replaced by “clicks”. Incidentally this is the idea of your blog, no? In seeking the essence of “vintage” and compares it to the modern world, individuals take delight with the past, which I would name “the age of innocence.” That time will never come back and therefore is so precious. Cheers.
You know, I don’t think it’s people who can’t stand raw reality, I think it’s just the people in charge of fashion magazines. After all, if us girls looked at ads and models and thought “hell yeah, I look that good”, then the whole magazine and beauty industry would implode!
I definitely prefer vintage fashion photography because the photos were less messed about with, although re-touching was must still have been going on. Have you seen the post of Joan Crawford from 1931 before and after re-touching? http://weheartvintage.co/2013/01/27/joan-crawford-retouched-and-unretouched/
Augustus, before digital imaging, there were techniques used to ‘improve’ skin tones, (at printing stage) etc…. it was a harder technique to get satisfactory results from, but it was used in magazine images.
Hi Gerry – good point – like the Joan Crawford photo before and after re-touching: http://weheartvintage.co/2013/01/27/joan-crawford-retouched-and-unretouched/
I like the fact that photos of a lot of 50s models (like Anne St Marie for example) showed the tiny wrinkles and real skin tone though. They look like real but very beautiful (and very thin) women…
Hello Gerry, nice to hear you. Sure they had a lot of work to get the right point (final skin/clothes tones, etc, etc.) But analog photography showed the real quality of things beyond the talent of the photographer. It was hard work & totally manual labor, far different from a computer program that allows anyone to make everything without criteria (just take a look at Dita’s portrait above: she’s deformed !!! I talk – specifically – about commercial images; art photos plus tech are something else…) Regards.
Wow, that Joan C before and after is truly enlightening! I must admit that I prefer the glowing Joan, but I would love to see something in between! I am living in a region with constant weather changes and I am hyper aware of how the light and environment affects how I look, makeup too of course! With lighting and makeup there are already so many ways to affect a photo, major retouching seems ridiculous, although maybe it is now an alternative to photography acumen, just “fix it”later.
Hi Wendy
I know what you mean. You do wonder how good a photographer needs to be if a photo is going to be re-touched enormously…
Striking! You knew that everything was done manually and with brushes? Almost an second oil portrait … Furthermore lets consider that Joan Crawford was a diva and those photos were idealizing, much more than truth itself.
I strongly disagree about what you said – don’t blame people in charge of fashion magazines. They make what consumers WANT TO SEE: Let’s face it, no one, male or female, browse common people in magazines, billboards or movies. Everyone yearns for physical perfection by what very few have it… The subject is very complex. Since the Ancient Greeks no one seeks the real, but DREAM!
I always wondered how retouching was done before people had computers – wow. Kind of a work of art in itself!
I see what you mean about fashion magazines – people do want some fantasty and perfection in their magazines – I just think it sometimes goes too far (and too thin!)
All I have to say is…why?
Airbrushing and photo-shopping has really gotten out of control. I stopped giving magazines the time of day about three years ago, because I realized then what a lot of us our realizing now – more often than not, they provide unattainable perfectionism for us women to “lust” over.
No thanks!
I feel like that too. I can understand why you would want to airbrush out a spot maybe, but so often (and I’m particularly thinking of Vogue here) the models look half way between photographs and those strange computer-created drawings of people. It’s the weird shiny featureless skin tone which makes them look so strange I think… Almost like they’re mannequins instead of real people
Totally.
INDEED!
thanks for such a great blog!
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