"Photograph" or Illustration?

Photo Manipulation has gone too far! What ever happened to natural beauty? There is no such thing as natural beauty in the media today. Pictures are all manipulated in some way where it is just removing a zit, erasing freckles, or just changing the lighting or colouring. At the other end of the scale there are manipulations such as changing skin tones, widening eyes, making people skinnier/ more toned.

I am not really sure what I think about the OJ Simpson picture on the cover of Time magazine. I truly believe people see it differently and I understand why people see what they do. There are two different sides to every story. Time was either trying to make their magazine stand out so it would catch peoples attention OR they were trying to make OJ look scarier, guilty, mean, dark, evil, etc. Personally, I don’t really believe that this photo manipulation is racist. I believe people try to bring racism into any problem when they don’t have anything else to blame it on. People love to play the “race card” when they have nothing else. It’s not like Time darkened him and only him, they darkened the border to so that the whole picture appeared darker.

Compared to other photo manipulation such as Madonna’s Glamour cover for December 1990, this OJ Simpson cover is nothing. What about Katie Couric’s image? When she became the first woman head anchor, instead of being respected for that, they decided to manipulate her photos and make her skinnier. I think it is a lot different to make some one skinnier then they actually are, or change someones smile! I don’t believe they really changed OJ’s appearance all that much, it just seems like the pictures were taken with different lighting. Why did the media feel the need to post his mug shot anyway? Clearly no one looks good in a mug shot! You’re not aloud to smile; everyone looks like a criminal, so clearly this picture was posted to help persuade that he is guilty. Personally, I don’t really see this as the magazine being racist, but I am not surprised that people say this.
I don’t believe this photo manipulation is unethical. People alter photos everyday, I think making someone skinnier, or putting someones head on someone else’s body is unethical! Although, it seems our society accepts it all!
This is only my opinion, I do realize that people with different backgrounds, ethnicity, religion, etc with have different opinions. Perhaps, African Americans may find this racist as they sometimes receive the stereotype that they are the “bad” guys just because of their skin tone. Personally, I find that completely ridiculous and his skin colour should have nothing to do with deciding whether he is guilty or not. What does it say about our world when the jury is suppose to be random, and an outsiders view, meanwhile no matter what they are always rigged. Racism is definitely still around and this just proves it. There should be no need to have an African American dominated jury so that it is “fair” skin tone shouldn’t matter at all!

Work Cited

Unknown Artist. “OJ Simpson Newsweek TIME”. June 27th, 1994. Online image. Airbrushed Ethics. December 31st, 2007.

Unknown Artist. “Katie Couric”. August 29th 2007. Online image. TV Newser: the news about the news. December 31st, 2007.