Role of Photography; VLP LO1.1

Learning Objective 1

1.1 Investigate the role of photography as a visual communication medium.

My project is all based around beauty and whether or not there is one idea of what is beauty, so therefore I am going to be looking at beauty campaigns and look at how photography has played a huge part in this whole ideology.

More than just marketing magic and kitsch catchphrases, beauty campaigns have documented the changes in women's lives throughout the 20th century - from 1940s wartime austerity and 1950s aspiration, through to sexual liberation, equality and a more diverse attitude to beauty. We've delved into the archives to bring you this retrospective of some of our favourite beauty campaigns from times gone by.

http://www.stylist.co.uk/beauty/beauty-campaigns-through-the-ages

Elizabeth Arden, 1945. This beauty campaign illustrates to us that throughout generations and generations of women beauty was always considered one of the more important things in life.

Beauty campaigns play a huge part in what we as a society perceive beauty to be. The way the photographs are edited and the models chosen indicate to us that this is what we, as women, should all aspire to be. They also make us believe that if we buy the product they are trying to sell to us then we too can look exactly like the model on the campaign and in turn we will be considered as beautiful women within society.

Yardley, 1967. The photography used here and throughout all beauty campaigns, is designed to draw your eye towards the area of the face that their product is enhancing. By choosing photographs that have this effect on its audience, means that they can show off their product and in turn this results in a successful campaign.

In more modern times the whole idea of beauty has taken a whole new level with the development of Photoshop and after effects. These new pieces of software have literally changed the way women look, as now more than ever more and more advertisers are using Photoshop to help promote their products by selling us a false idea of what is perfect.

After conducting further research into this new generation of Photo shopped images, I came across an article on the Mail Online (Daily Mail). 

The following images are described in the article as; Unrecognisable: The Helena Rubinstein campaign images of 49-year-old Demi Moore bear almost no resemblance to her real face, with its natural skin tone, signs of ageing, lines and angular contours. Even her ears seem to be in a different place - above her eyeline in the airbrushed photo, much lower in the real one.

Learning Objective 1

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2117110/Demi-Moore-face-photoshopped-Helena-Rubinstein-beauty-campaign.html

Believe it or not this is the same woman. For me this clearly shows how we as a society are being sold this false idea of what beauty really is as the models and celebrities they use in their campaigns don’t even look like the images we see as consumers.

Beauty products were there for us to be able to enhance what we already have however now it’s all about aiming for the impossible. A perfect face and body to match.

The images used within campaigns clearly play a huge role in the way women think and react. The article also stated; psychologist Dr Linda Papadopolous, who has researched the topic extensively for the government, said excessive airbrushing, can have the direct effect of making women feel bad.

We're exposed to more images today than at any time in our history, so we're more likely to compare ourselves to them,' she said. 'There's no end of studies that show that consistently seeing airbrushed images makes women feel worse about themselves.

'In my clinical psychology work I'm seeing more and more 40-year-olds with anorexia or body image disturbances,' she adds. 'They feel as though they don't have the right to age and have wrinkles. There's a phobia of our bodies going over the age of 18 or looking anything other than young, slim and supple. Advertisers are selling people insecurity.'

Photography plays a huge role within this industry as without it the products simply wouldn’t sell. The companies that run within this market use photography as a way of tapping into the insecurities that we as women have and use it to try and change our perception of what we believe we should look like and by selling us a false interpretation of what beauty is. Knowing that we can never achieve such a look means that their products will keep on selling as women will keep on buying in the hope that one day they will achieve their dream look.