Now that the new iPhone 4 gives you the option to photograph yourself without holding the camera in that bizarre, stilted position known to teenagers all over the globe, we can say goodbye to a kind of picture-posing that will, in future generations, read as an early twenty-first century visual cliché.
But it doesn't make a huge dent in the
bad judgment people use when taking and posting, pictures of themselves.
I've begun creating an informal taxonomy of the kinds of visual tropes that find their way to the screen, of which the
duck face may be the most horrifying. If you're old enough to remember the plastic-surgery train wreck known as Jocelyn Wildenstein (pictured above, right), then no amount of pouty pictures of Angelina Jolie (above left) are likely to lure you into the botoxsphere any time soon.
On the other hand, a recent story in
The New York Times revealed that parents frequently pay to have their childrens' school photos
doctored. A facsinating debate: does doing so boost confidence, so that a kid with an ill-timed blemish or two doesn't go down in history as having catastrophic acne, or are these parents sending the wrong message — reinforcing the idea that you're only as good as you look?
Which brings us back to bad judgment. If a picture's worth a thousand words, a publicly broadcast picture is amplified, multiplied and cast out into a world where it can go anywhere, be seen by anyone, a virus in the making. Broadcast pictures can be brutal, even
lethal. Even the iPhone 4 can't fix that.
Comments [3]
11.26.10
06:20
Just because Photoshop and digital photography has made the practice ubiquitous, and the school photo companies have made it a price point instead of a service doesn't mean it is new.
Besides, these photos are for posterity, removing a blemish or a scab isn't the same as making celebrities appear preternaturally young nd thin, a regular occurrence in most consumer magazines.
11.27.10
04:40
12.02.10
10:22