Retouching: Today vs the Past

Here's a video from one of my favourite YouTubers, Bernadette Banner. She's not a photographer, she does historical sewing, mostly focused on the late Victorian/Edwardian era. However, she just put out this video talking about retouching today (via Facetune) on social media, compared to the retouching people did to photographs in the 19th and early 20th century, in particular to achieve a certain fashionable look. I thought she did a good job explaining things, and appreciate her discussion towards the end of the video, where she contemplates whether people have always considered artistic representations of people to not be 100% realistic, and not, as we modern people assume, that things were more "pure" in the past.

Thanks Rachelle !
Great video . just goes to show there is really nothing new under the sun..

Nearly everyone thinks that a photograph is an accurate representation of reality, when it's really just how it works w/ photography. It's not reality, it's a picture. Photography is funny that way. Absolutely no one thinks that a sculpture/etching/painting is reality, they know it's just the artists interpretation, and it varies wildly between one artist to another.

Movies and TV are probably why this is so. They fake us into thinking that what we are seeing is real. Often I can get caught up in that when watching either one, and forget that it's not real. TV and movies are very, very powerful visual mediums that seem to go right past the filter in our minds that tells us this is play acting, not real. People are always underestimating that power, and will often say it's "just" a movie, but it effects us emotionally and psychologically as if it were really happening. Yet that idea persists w/ still photography, they think it shouldn't be gussied up too much because it takes away from the reality of the shot, when it never had any reality in the first place.

mooseontheloose said:

I thought she did a good job explaining things, and appreciate her discussion towards the end of the video, where she contemplates whether people have always considered artistic representations of people to not be 100% realistic, and not, as we modern people assume, that things were more "pure" in the past.

Click to expand...

I now just how much reality was removed by the skilled retoucher. Probably still goes on. Photoshop makes it easy these days. I knew several ad agency retouchers that removed skin blemishes, fixed the eyes, removed wrinkles, a few errant hairs and the like. They removed lots of things and added new things with the airbrush.

In the good old day6s, we use to use extremely long exposures to remove people in a scene. No PShop in them there days.

Elbows on the table! How unlady like.