My fellow blogger Nadine just hooked me up with the details on Dove’s press release for tomorrow, since she got an exclusive advance copy today (and got invited to the annual Step Up Women’s Network Inspirational awards – jealous!) If you haven’t been keeping up with the airbrushing debacle, here’s the rundown: photographer Pascal Dangin (who works for Annie Leibovitz, who shot Dove’s latest Real Beauty campaign) claims that the photos were *shudder* retouched. Tomorrow, Dove sets the record straight about the ordeal:
Statement from Dove about The New Yorker Article
9 May 2008, 4:45pmDove’s mission is to make more women feel beautiful every day by widening the definition of beauty and inspiring them to take great care of themselves. Dove strives to portray women by accurately depicting their shape, size, skin color and age.
The “real women” ad referenced in recent media coverage was created and produced entirely by Ogilvy, the Dove brand’s advertising agency, from start to finish and the women’s bodies were not digitally altered.
Pascal Dangin worked with photographer Annie Leibovitz (Ogilvy has never employed Mr. Dangin on the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty), who did the photography for the launch of the Dove ProAge campaign, a new campaign within the Campaign for Real Beauty. There was an understanding between Dove and Ms. Leibovitz that the photos would not be retouched – the only actions taken were the removal of dust from the film and minor color correction.
“Let’s be perfectly clear – Pascal does all kinds of work – but he is primarily a printer – and only does retouching when asked to. The idea for Dove was very clear at the beginning. There was to be NO retouching and there was not,” confirmed Annie Leibovitz, commenting on the ProAge campaign.
Mr. Dangin responded, “The recent article published by The New Yorker incorrectly implies that I retouched the images in connection with the Dove “real women” ad. I only worked on the Dove ProAge campaign taken by Annie Leibovitz and was directed only to remove dust and do color correction – both the integrity of the photographs and the women’s natural beauty were maintained.”
I don’t think airbrushing photos defies the idea of the “Real Beauty” campaign anyway. Let’s be real: These are photographs that have to be blown up, sized down, and printed at giant resolutions in every form of publication. Freckles, pimples and discoloration aren’t the signs that someone is “real” in a photograph – they’re distracting and visually confusing. Take a graphic design class before you judge, people!
This is always the problem when a company sets itself up as “holier than thou” like Dove does with it’s real beauty campaign. They make the implication that other brands featuring beautiful models are somehow giving women the wrong message.
It still seems hypocritical to me if they are air-brushing out pimples & freckles. Those things are reality. If they don’t want to show them in their ads, they don’t want to show real beauty.
I do agree with Left Brain that this campaign is definitely “holier than thou”. There isn’t anything wrong with pretty people or using pictures of them.
I do a lot of photo and beauty retouching. When I shoot a photo of someone with a pimple, I get rid of it and I don’t charge extra because I consider it very basic. If someone has a pimple the day they were shooting, they won’t have that pimple a week later. Also, it is indeed distracting and takes away from the overall look of the picture. Your eye is automatically going to dart to it.
I think this is a totally different idea than saying that the photos were actually BEAUTY retouched. Just from looking at the photos I can tell you there were TONS of things I could easily fix.
They have left everything that a normal person has when they age alone. The idea is that people can age and still be beautiful, and what we end up with is pictures a people who obviously aged, but still look beautiful. It’s hard to say whether they have actually been retouched for small things because they have probably passed through many hands before the final product, but I feel that the idea is well executed.