Perfectly Human

The debate over the morality of retouching/reshaping models in post processing has been a hotly contested issue for quite a while now and recently led me to begin questioning my own thoughts on what I define as beauty. The reality of the situation is that there is no single definition – beauty comes in all different shapes, colors, and sizes. We all know that. But what about the idea of “perfection?” Certainly if someone or something is perfect, then one could have the argument that the person in question is indeed, beautiful. The question then arises: Is it possible to create a portrait of the “perfect human.”

In an effort to illustrate this concept, my journey started with exploring the idea of symmetry. Now, we’ve all seen those portrait series’ wherein the photographer splits the image in half and duplicates one side to cover the other. The results, more often than not, are sloppy at best and creepy at worst (uncanny valley, anyone?). These examples published by PetaPixel demonstrate this. But what if we were bring back elements of the photo (namely, the subject’s hair) that regain that sense of reality while still offering an otherwise perfectly symmetrical subject? The results are, dare I say, perfect: