Saturday, May 31, 2008

Pixel Perfect...

How many of your photographs in your collection are the REAL DEAL ?

By this I mean if they are the original conception and instant image conceived by the artist or a backstage calculated and pumped up on technology steroids image reminiscent  of  all the major editorial magazines and publications.

Are you a fan and collector of REAL photography or you are simply falling for that perfect looking image that simulate a poster because there is no flaws in it?

How much value do these rather trendy and off the moment techniques add to the photographs?

Is  Photography as an art media evolving to accept this new technology and the days of instant imaging (Polaroid) are doomed?

How will these new technology fare with old good Classic Photography without all these tricks out of a hat?


ARTmostfierce had all these questions and many more on his head after reading this article in the New Yorker Magazine written by Lauren Collins . It is a very good article and I recommend that you read it (it is seven pages long) and find out what really happens behind the scenes.


ARTmostfierce was so extremely disappointed to find out that photographers like Phillip-Lorca DiCorcia, Patrick Demarchelier and Annie Leibovitz are among the many artists that do some serious professional backstage image manipulation changing anything you can imagine to achieve that perfect image.I was well aware of the fashion editorial photography but, not so much for book publishing and  specially REAL art collection photographs!
Another questionable example of the merging of ART and Fashion!

The guy responsible for most of it is Pascal Dangin and he is quite brilliant at it!
Not only he has an incredible eye to identify flaws but,  also how to correct them and even fool people with good trained eyes! This is the kind of guy that you want right next to you when you are about to buy a photograph. He will dissect it and put it back together for you in a matter of seconds! He is a genius!
 
Enjoy the article !
Let me know your thoughts!

For a charity auction a few years back, the photographer Patrick Demarchelier donated a private portrait session. The lot sold, for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, to the wife of a very rich man. It was her wish to pose on the couple’s yacht. “I call her, I say, ‘I come to your yacht at sunset, I take your picture,’ ” Demarchelier recalled not long ago. He took a dinghy to the larger boat, where he was greeted by the woman, who, to his surprise, was not wearing any clothes.
“I want a picture that will excite my husband,” she said.
Capturing such an image, by Demarchelier’s reckoning, proved to be difficult. “I cannot take good picture,” he said. “Short legs, so much done to her face it was flat.” Demarchelier finished the sitting and wondered what to do. Eventually, he picked up the phone: “I call Pascal. ‘Make her legs long!’ ”
Pascal Dangin is the premier retoucher of fashion photographs. Art directors and admen call him when they want someone who looks less than great to look great, someone who looks great to look amazing, or someone who looks amazing already—whether by dint of DNA or M·A·C—to look, as is the mode, superhuman. (Christy Turlington, for the record, needs the least help.) In the March issue of Vogue Dangin tweaked a hundred and forty-four images: a hundred and seven advertisements (Estée Lauder, Gucci, Dior, etc.), thirty-six fashion pictures, and the cover, featuring Drew Barrymore. To keep track of his clients, he assigns three-letter rubrics, like airport codes. Click on the current-jobs menu on his computer: AFR (Air France), AMX (American Express), BAL (Balenciaga), DSN (Disney), LUV (Louis Vuitton), TFY (Tiffany & Co.), VIC (Victoria’s Secret).
Vanity Fair, W, Harper’s Bazaar, Allure, French Vogue, Italian Vogue, V, and the Times Magazine, among others, also use Dangin. Many photographers, including Annie Leibovitz, Steven Meisel, Craig McDean, Mario Sorrenti, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia, rarely work with anyone else. Around thirty celebrities keep him on retainer, in order to insure that any portrait of them that appears in any outlet passes through his shop, to be scrubbed of crow’s-feet and stray hairs. Dangin’s company, Box Studios, has eighty employees and occupies a four-story warehouse in the meatpacking district. “I have Patrick!” an assistant to Miranda Priestly, the editor of Runway, exclaims in “The Devil Wears Prada,” but her real-life counterparts probably log as much time speed-dialling Pascal.

Please read more about this interesting article !

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