Ad Buster

For this project, I chose to use an ad promoting diet pills.  I found this ad in a popular magazine with a famous celebrity endorsing this product; therefore, it is viewed by large amounts of women.  The ad shows Kim and Khloe Kardashian in a bikini looking beach ready with a big smile on their face promoting their product, Quick-Trim. This is something that most people strive to look like and happiness is always a good thing.  Quick-Trim is not a safe product and many women are now using it.  However, because of airbrushing and editing this picture, the female teen to adult audience, gets a sense of unattainable beauty and are harming their bodies by taking these unsafe diet pills.  Studies have shown that diet pills can cause serious health problems and in some cases, even death.  Popular magazines should not be exploiting such products. 

Personal Photo - Body

            After learning about the use of the body in photography, I decided to create a photographic series exploring models and their use of the body.  Clearly, most models are extremely, sometimes even scary, skinny.  Models have most “average” women’s ideal body type.  These “average” women are constantly reminded of what they should look like by the media’s portrayal of this unnaturally thin model seen via various images.  These images can put stress and pressure on women to look like this. As the standard models are becoming more and more thin, women, especially young ones, have a strong desire to look like these models they strive to be.  Not only do men drool over the gorgeous models, but also their celebrity status and fairy-tale lifestyle is something most women yearn for.  Some women want to be so unnaturally thin, that they go through drastic effects, such as eating disorders, in order to maintain this unrealistic representation.  Through the use of celebrity-magazine images, I appropriated and arranged photographs while adding text to raise awareness of the body image problems that models create for the “average” woman. 

            For my first image, I cut out different parts of different model’s bodies and formed an entire new model.  I added the text “One and The Same” because I felt as if it validated my point that these models are more robotic than human.  Also, because they all look the same; slender, tall, and gorgeous, it made them less unique. This is also the same idea I used my second image.  In the next image, I chose to form a collage of model’s midsections only, which are obviously all unnaturally skinny. These images can be found so easily throughout all magazines, that it reinforces my theory that models cause women to want to achieve this “unattainable beauty.”  My last image compares a thin model to a plus-sized model, which is rarely seen in magazines.  The plus-size model is not overweight by any means and because she is considered fat, average women become more body-conscious. 

            In this project, I mostly used the idea of gaze, which is connected to the body in photography.  The gaze “implies the complex power relations that are a part of the acts of looking and being looked at.”  This idea is exactly what modeling is based on.  Although their bodies are extremely skinny and distracting from other parts, the gaze a model has portrays her high confidence level, which is something everybody wants to feel.  Another idea that interested me was fetishism, because models, and their bodies, are seen as an object of sexual desire.  Nancy Burson’s photographic representation in her First and Second Beauty Composites influenced me to explore the beautiful models, just as she did.  Although I believe that models provide unrealistic expectations to “average” women and cause body-image issues, I still look up to these gorgeous models; however, I understand that the images we see of these models can easily be altered and are not necessarily an accurate depiction of them. 

Photographic Perspectives

A. Photographic Perspective of a Flower

B.
Lighting
I chose to explore the lighting aspect of photography first.  I chose to photograph my favorite flower in my sorority house.  I decided to take pictures outdoor in the early afternoon.  I feel as if the bright sun and clear sky was the perfect lighting for this white and yellow flower. The lighting not only illuminates the flower, but it also gives a sense of happiness and bliss.

Texture
I chose to explore the element of texture, second.  In order to get photographs of this flower's unique texture, I had to get extremely close to the object.  The petals are a different texture then the seeds on the inside, so a variety of shots were taken in order to show the many textures on this specific object.  I want everyone to look at these photos and feel as up close and personal as I did.