- I am not wholly convinced
that throughout all of history, the pictorial representation
of the human figure has ever promised to be a
representation of reality. But that for some reason today, we have changed our
expectations to expect it to be. This video is sponsored by Nord
VPN, but more on this anon. So, I may or may not have
fallen down a slight rabbit hole in which I watched a bunch of those "Exposing Influencers Facetuned Instagram Photo Analysis"
video type things. And ultimately the general
conclusion seems to be drawn that facetune is problematic,
and is destroying society, and basically I just wanted to
get on here real quick today to explore this idea real
quick, because guess what? Facetune, photo manipulation
in an effort to achieve a general aesthetic ideal, is not new to our modern social media era. I feel like it is fairly common knowledge that the Victorians did
have some little tricks up their sleeve to alter their photos. We have very obvious, clever, artistic, funny examples of people
holding their heads and being ghosts, and
doing things that we know are not possible but they
were able to achieve these by messing with the negatives. The Victorians had Photoshop. However, I inevitably started
looking into this topic a little bit more. And during my research, I found that the practice
of retouching photos, just general portraits,
pictures that weren't meant to be artistic pieces, or
weren't meant to be funny or jokes or whatever, was
actually really common. So common in fact that
I actually came across a couple of texts that instruct people, not only how to retouch their own photos, but also suggest that photos taken in commercial photo studios, i.e. where you would go to
have your portrait taken, retouching was just a
natural intrinsic part of the photography process. And the more I looked into this and the more evidence I started examining, the more I realized that these
were not just one-off texts of people who said,
this is the one true way to do the thing, as we see
a lot in the sewing manuals, but the more extant Victorian
photographs I looked at, the more I realized
retouching is so common. And it ranges from not only
does curiously everyone in every 19th century portrait
photo that I have looked at, miraculously have perfect skin, but also the figure and the body itself could be very easily manipulated to achieve the ideal body type. And this becomes way more
prevalent in the Edwardian period than it does earlier in the 19th century. Because especially in
the Edwardian period, we get a very, very specific
and highly unnatural idealistic body type,
especially for women. So, the more Edwardian
portraits I looked at, and especially the ones
that look ~really sus~, like how is your waist that small? How is your bust shaped like that? Like this, something's going on here, almost every single one of
those photos when I enlarged it, you could see some evidence of retouching. So, I know the conversation
about how the late Victorians and the Edwardians liked to
retouch the waist a little bit to make their waists
look impossibly small, that conversation has
been floating around, especially the dress history
and costuming portions of the internet for quite some time. And that is certainly something
that was very widely done, and we will look at
some of those examples. Once you see them, you cannot unsee them, but retouching extends beyond the waist. And just as we today can
manipulate our photos in a range, ranging from a filter to smooth your skin, all the way up to Facetune,
to pull in your waist and accentuate other parts of your body, the Victorians and
Edwardians had that control over their photos as
well, and they did it. And just as we have those ranges today, we see those ranges
throughout history as well. We see, especially amongst
the Victorian \influencers\, the actresses, and the
Gibson Girls especially who were supposed to how
these very, very small waists in this very specific Edwardian figure, there are some of the
more dramatic instances of photo manipulation on those images. Granted, these images
tend to be better done because there are also very
similar manipulations done on studio portraits, people who are very clearly not actresses, but just normal humans who have attempted some form of body manipulation
in their photographs, and it's very, very obvious. So, just as today, the
amateur budding influencer can open up Facetune and
take a selfie of themselves in front of a fence and gently
squidge parts of their body to be where they want them to be. And suddenly the fence in the background makes those changes very obvious, the Kardashians amongst modern society have professional teams of people who can retouch their photos as well as just more general experience in the art of retouching and knowing what backgrounds to photograph against so that the retouching
is a bit less obvious. So it was super interesting
to look at all these images and to draw all the comparisons
to the conversations that are happening today, centering around Facetune and
whether or not it is ethical or artistic or wrong or
problematic or misleading or perpetuating unrealistic body ideals. Spoiler alert, I am not wholly convinced that throughout all of history, the pictorial representation
of the human figure has ever promised to be a
representation of reality, but that for some reason today, we have changed our
expectations to expect it to be. So, let's do a little
bit of investigation. This particular text
that I was referencing, this was published in 1898. It does throw some light on
some of the typical practices for retouching photographs. It's written directed towards people who wish to get into retouching on a more personal, independent level, but written from the framework of here's how they do it
in the commercial shops. And here's how you can try it yourself. This book effectively has chapters on every part of the body, basically walking you through what the "ideal" retouching goals are. There is in the facial section, plenty of emphasis on the
removal of wrinkles and lines and freckles on the face: "No one ever asserted that
freckles constituted beauty, in the faces of young ladies and gentlemen there should be no deep lines or wrinkles, in dealing with the
photographs commercially, it is perhaps advisable to air if at all, in the direction of youth." It is all well and good to read what sounds to be very subjective ideals for a specific practice. However, on examining actual photographs from the late 19th century
and turn of the 20th century, I came to realize you
really don't see freckles or spots or any sort of
skin defect on people, which either suggests that
everyone in the Victorian period had perfect complexion-- and this is of course also
a belief that is perpetuated by the flawless actors that
we see in period films, we, many of us may have
built a subconscious bias to believe that natural
texture on human skin is a phenomenon of the latter
part of the 20th century. Just as today, we believe
everything we see on the internet, we also don't think to question everything we see in old
photography and portraiture. The chapter on the neck especially starts to go
into tremendous detail on what bones and shadows
and wrinkles and lines need to be removed. He starts talking about this tendon here that needs to be erased from here to here, but this bit down here where
it connects to the collarbone needs to be left. He talks about any texture on the chest needing to be erased. So they did have the ability to do this. They would do this with paint, they would do this with pencil, they would do this with blades, you could scrape off
bits of the photograph, and depending on the
quality of the photograph, the colors in the photograph, that would determine what
medium you would use. So if you're against a dark background, you could paint in with a dark paint to cut into the waste for example if you want
to smooth that down, you could go in with white paints, you could go in with pencils
if you need a finer line over a dark background. Let's have a look at some images. This woman here as you can see, her waste has most
definitely been reduced, some of the photographs are
more obvious than others. And some of the ones that
have been more subtly done require you to open the image, blow it up, and zoom in, and then you can see it. It's kind of remarkable how
most of us have just gone all this time without
noticing, without looking, because we just look at it
and assume it's a real thing. Despite the fact that
some of these alterations are quite obvious, I
think just like today, a warped fence in the background is not something you would think to notice unless you are actively
looking for elements of retouching in someone's
Instagram photos. This one here is a little bit more subtle, it hasn't been as viciously
scraped down at the waist, but you can still see that she's
altered a bit of her waist. You can see where the shadow is. This is also where a lot
of our myth of these people had two inch waists comes from because we do look at these
photographs and we say, "Oh my God, she's got such a small waist." Whereas if you actually draw in the bit that has been erased out, you can see that they do have
remarkably normal waists. This lady here, this is the kind of image
that you see on Pinterest, and just right off the
bat, it just looks sus. These types of images, if you open them and you zoom them in, and they're high enough
quality, 9.9 times out of 10, we'll see that they have been retouched. We can draw in her original waist here, and find out that she did
not in fact look like that because this is in fact
a highly impossible shape for the human figure to have. I mean, just like she's
missing like 12 ribs. This is also something
that I've been personally very curious about in history, how in photographs you
see they've all got these perfectly round, smooth,
pigeon-fronted chests, whereas it's kind of impossible
to have a chest of that size with no cleavage, like how does that work? After having explored
the art of retouching, I now understand that they had every means of erasing cleavage lines, as well as erasing any
bone evidence up here, because you can also create this shape if you have a very small chest, you wouldn't have the cleavage, but you would have more likely
more texture on the chest. So, let's talk about the
Victorian/Edwardian influencer, because some of the images
that we have just looked at are very clearly portrait
images of regular women. The last one does seem to be
some sort of women of society I don't know who she is. I have not found a source
disclaiming that information, the topic of celebrity and
who is, what is, celebrity, is obviously a concept that
has changed drastically over the centuries from
politicians, nobility, high society, stage, opera,
film, television stars, to now the internet influencer. I'm going to use the word influencer because that is effectively
what they were doing, their clothing, their
aesthetics, their styles, created this aesthetic ideal
that others wanted to emulate because they were perceived to be at this height of a
social hierarchy I guess, one of the quintessential
influencers of the time is Camille Clifford. She is a Belgian actress, she
is known for her iconic style, she is also one of the best known models for Charles Dana Gibson. So she is- she IS- the
idealistic Gibson Girl. The Gibson Girl is
effectively the equivalent of an Edwardian aesthetic. And I mean aesthetic as in
how we refer to the term today as in cottagecore. The Gibson Girl was
kind of a physical ideal that people aspired to. And of course there were
Gibson Girl influencers who did the look perfectly. The Gibson Girl is known for
the pigeon chest, tiny waist, that sort of straight fronted look, where it looks like
you're leaning forward, that is an effected stance, your corset is not doing that for you. Camille Clifford's
photographs initially threw me for a big loop because her photographs are very, very well and
professionally handled, I would equate her to
like Kardashian level. Her figure first of all, it looks impossible when you look at her, oh my God she had the tiniest
waist, how did she do that? She probably in real life did
have a relatively small waist. She was probably one
of the small selection of the population of high-fashion women especially who were willing to tight lace to achieve this fashionable ideal. So I don't doubt that her
waist was unusually small, but what she does in the photographs, is makes it even smaller. I mean, it's just like a Kardashian today who's had all this plastic surgery done to make their bodies a very specific way, and yet they still Facetune their photos because of what are you
doing if you are not going to the most extreme that
you can possibly go to? So, initially a lot of
her photos threw me off because they're very hard to spot. She is very strategically, almost always photographed
against backgrounds that are vague, that are
blurred, that are out of focus, so that she can get away with slimming down the waist very easily without that being shown, there is this one in which the
retouching is very obvious. You can see at the waist, her waist is still very
small as we can see, but it's just not this dramatic
literal hourglass shape. We've got this pair of photos, Madam, this is the same photo shoot. This is the same day,
you're in the same dress, you're in the same pose. And yet you can see that
the shape of her waist is dramatically different
from one image to the next. So, these are things that you really, really have to be looking for. These are not things that you
are going to look at the image and say, "Oh, that's impossible." In fact, it is so believable that we have created entire
mythological beliefs, that the Victorians were
snapping themselves in half and removing ribs and dying and fainting because of the photographs that we see of people for example,
like Camille Clifford, who doctored their photos
to this unrealistic beauty ideal that we believe is true. Which honestly says a lot more about our modern
understandings of photography and the imagery that we consume and what we choose to believe
without questioning today. And this isn't to say that
every Victorian photograph that you see ever has had
the waist slimmed down. I do think the majority of especially commercial photography that
we see from these periods has been retouched, but I think it's primarily
on the face and on the skin. I don't think just as today, people are more comfortable
using skin filters to make your skin look nice, but not everyone's comfortable actually physically altering
the shape of their body. It's also significantly more effort and significantly more noticeable, if you do it poorly, to alter
the actual shape of the body, it requires a lot more
pre-production planning. You have to be in front
of the right background that will allow you to do it subtly. Otherwise it will be noticeable. That's all to say, this
is just the cherry on top. This is just that push over the edge into the exaggeratedly
impossible because historically, and I'm not just talking about the Edwardian and the
Victorian period at this point, but throughout pretty
much all of historical English dress, especially
elsewhere in the world too, historical dress was
masterful at illusion. And especially going back
to the Edwardian period. By this period, they
had such sophisticated methods of illusion to create
this completely insane figure that was considered idealistic. So you had to have this
very full fronted chest, which okay, if you don't have
the natural bust to do that, you could pad out your corset. There are so many advertisements
for structural devices, bust bodices, bust improvers, things that were very unashamedly
sold and worn by women who needed to achieve
this aesthetic ideal. You could pad out your hips as well. These two in combination
create the illusion that you have a very tiny waist, even though you maybe have
not corseted down at all, the waists are not as small
as you think they are. They're not these 18 inch, 20
inch waists for the most part, unless you've got like a
high society fashion lady who has been retouched or
like a very young girl. So, all of this talk about
penciling, and painting, and scraping, and retouching, and basically going in with artistic implements onto a photograph, kind of gets me to
thinking about how is this that much different from the portraiture that existed for hundreds of years before the introduction of photography? Before the introduction of photography, people were used to only having reference of people through, well,
portraiture or engravings, basically artistic
representations of humans, which clearly aren't real. It is so easy, in fact,
it is no more effort for an artist to paint someone's
waist a little bit smaller or paint someone's hair
a little bit taller, or emit all of the blemishes
or the freckles on your skin. It requires no additional
step of retouching, it just requires painting
it in a very specific way. So, part of me got to wondering that in the days before photography, if people just have this
intrinsic understanding that the depictions of
people that they saw were not actually what these
people look like in real life. And even as the world progressed into the realm of photography, if that mindset stuck
around to the point where it felt like a slightly
more sharply done portrait, but that, that intrinsic understanding that this isn't reality still remained for the majority of the beginning of photography's existence, which got me to thinking has
pictorial representations of humans ever been accurate
at any point in history prior to the introduction of photography? Were people more just "take
it with a grain of salt" about the bodies they saw in photos in the 19th century because
of this priming of distrust built from their
understanding of portraiture and illustrated fashion plates, which everyone knows is
idealistic and not real? An additional issue today though, is that online imagery
plays such a huge part in our consumption practices. Kardashians demonstrating
their new concealers onto heavily filtered videos is literally the definition
of false advertising, deceiving people into thinking that the product is doing
something that it is physically, realistically not doing, but open any magazine or
look at any advertisement from a period prior to photography. Artistic renderings had to
be used in advertisements, which were inevitably
subject to artistic bias in favor of the product. Even up to the late 19th century, the early 20th century,
the 20s, the 30s, the 50s, advertising is still, despite
the ability to use photography very frequently done through
idealistic illustration, to sell a false reality of the product. Using skin filters in a video promoting your skincare products is therefore honestly nothing new, although it could be argued
that the live action nature of video gives people a
subconscious false sense of security in what they're looking at, and it makes it feel more like
actually emulating real life, which causes a problem when you're trying to
sell or buy a product. So, maybe the issue is that
filtering and face tuning is more impactful to
us today because we see so much more doctored content. Social media is in our faces 24/7, not just the occasional fashion plate that you see in a newspaper
from a high society ball that you will look at, admire, and then get on with your life. Social media shapes our
aesthetic interests, our lifestyle aspirations, so many aspects of how we live our lives and what we strive for
are literally ~influenced~ by the imagery that we see online, which if we allow ourselves
to place our achievements, self-worth, life value, in the context of comparing
ourselves to what we see online, really does not sound like a good recipe for any remote sense of self-satisfaction. We all have access to the internet. We all can, and most
of us do, share things in some capacity online. We know firsthand that
the pictures of our lives that we've put online are not
the complete version of us, regardless of whether or
not we Facetuned our selfie. So maybe the issue isn't so much that we are creating unrealistic
body representation today, in the same way that was
done in the Victorian period with manipulated photographs, in the same way that was done in the 18th and 17th and 16th
century with portraiture, and for centuries before that in the illuminated manuscripts
which most definitely are not anatomically correct. Maybe today we are
losing the understanding that what we see isn't reality, this naturally ingrained instinct that people of the past possibly had. That there are truths
behind the artistic images that we are presented with, and that this speaks to a
broader lack of awareness, lack of questioning the
reality, and the validity, and the truthfulness of what
is put in front of us online, of not succumbing to shaping
our entire IRL identities based on information that has been curated and fed to us through our internet feeds, this is actually a much more
pervasive and concerning issue across internet culture, than someone Facetuning their jaw line to be a little bit sharper. Thank you for joining on
today's wandering escapades, staying vigilant and internetting
consciously and safely is more important these
days than ever before, which is why I am pleased to introduce you to the sponsor for
today's video, Nord VPN. Nord VPN is a virtual private network, which is a service that
disguises your IP address, your computer's identity, so that you can't be identified
while browsing online. And more importantly, your
activity can't be monitored, passwords and data stolen by
nefarious internet lurkers, whilst using public unprotected WiFi. More importantly, however, by
disguising your IP address, you get to choose where in the world you'd like your disguise to be located. Copyright restrictions, your
favorite show is not available to stream in your country, no problem. Just switch your browser
to wherever you need to go, and start accessing a whole
host of shiny new content. If for example, you would
like to give the source on Victorian photo retouching
linked below a read, you will have to either be browsing in the U.S. or VPN-ing from the U.S., since it's only available
to view for U.S. users, which is a slight problem when
you are trying to research a video on the subject in the UK. So, Nord VPN's location services are absolutely essential along with, of course, accessing all
the American Netflix shows I no longer have access to, and occasionally getting to watch a show that was released in the U.S. before it was released
elsewhere in the world. Location restrictions are
in fact a thing of the past, but until media companies
actually catch up with this sensible logic,
visit nordvpn.com/bernadette and use code Bernadette at
checkout to get a two-year plan, plus a bonus gift with a huge discount. (gentle instrumental music)
This reminds me of the Roman emperor, Augustus, I believe it was, who was actually known to be really skinny and sickly looking face wise, but all of his statues portray him as a muscular warrior with a handsome face. This was used as propaganda to keep him in charge.
Great video! I’ve been watching her stuff for awhile because fashion is one of my other passions (pairs well with photography).
She asks an interesting question of should we expect photography to give us a realistic view of the world or is photography a means to achieve an artistic representation of the world?
I believe that it is a sliding scale. We use the camera to capture as best we can what we see with our eyes. We make adjustments to that image to bring to life our interpretation (or use camera tricks). Even in landscape photography we stack different images to create the final composition.
However, it is important to mention when we make adjustments. It isn’t that other photographer may not know but it is to help people understand that photography can be an artistic endeavor and not a documentarian.
Well - duh?
Ansel Adams was frikken famous for the number of hours, days - WEEKS even that he spent in his
lightdarkroom processing his images.This account was permanently suspended in retaliation for asking some subreddits to remove a blatant troll moderator. Take this type of dogshit behavior into consideration when using this website.
Always around for Bernadette, forgot I was in r/photography for a second there
There is only so much objectivity photographers are capable of, considering where one shoots from over another, what one chooses to photograph and what to ignore, how one shoots (through the choice of lens, angle, shutter speed, and light). Even without retouching in post, the image itself is a culmination of subjective choices to further particular interests; that of the photographer, the subject, the patron, an organisation, a purpose/cause, a narrative/interpretation, etc... Ultimately, the same kind of choices that other artists consider.
That was a fun video. Thanks for sharing.
Whats ironic is you see people today saying stuff like i wish people would post unedited photos like they used to do. Sure photo editing is more common today as it is much easier to do and more accessible. But like i always say photo editing is nothing new, and it has been done in the dark room for a very long time. I have no issue with editing of photos, personally i try to keep it on the light side. If you prefer 0 editing that is great, if you want to edit it heavily that is also fine, whatever it takes to create the photo you envisioned.
r/Instagramreality