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The November issue of Spanish Elle is trumpeting “12 famous women without Photoshop or make up” – four of them are featured on the cover.
They promise videos to come of the Making Of – which will presumably reveal the use of heavy-duty studio flash, and, in order to get those backgrounds appearing identical, colour correction.
We’ve seen all this before, many times. I’m not the first to point this out, but a sense of perspective among all this holier-than-thou, please. You may not be able to remove pimples in camera with a swipe of a clone tool, but you can sure make them all but invisible with the right studio and camera set up, if you know what you’re doing. Photoshop and make up are not the only tools we have, they’re just the ones that we’ve made the public feel angry about.
You’ve probably read about it everywhere else, but there’s more pictures of the blacked-up model from this month’s French Vogue here and on the photographer Steven Klein’s own website here.
Does the fact that it’s a French magazine make it less offensive? Not really – can anyone at French Vogue really claim surprise that the internet would be interested in this? Let alone the magazine’s appearance on newsstands around the world. Or the fact that the same issue doesn’t have a single black model in its pages. Nah, it’s just another giggle to go along with the devil worship spread and the baby-throwing one.
The photographer is American, and so surely aware of the history of blackface’s iconography. The model, Lara Stone, is Dutch, where controversy over blackface is hardly unknown. Blackface may not have been as culturally prevalent in France, but it did make it to Paris in the 1920s (see particularly p86-7), showcased in touring American variety shows that were talked about in the press at the time. And today in France, crass, insensitive depictions of black people still seem to be pretty commonplace.
Apparently editor-in-chief Carine Roitfield styled this one herself. Good thing she never wanted the American Vogue job anyway.
Enough already. We’ve been here before, when Kate Moss blacked up for The Independent‘s “African women” issue, guest-edited by Giorgio Armani, which was wrongheaded in all kinds of other ways.
If you’re still interested, I’ve posted a few more thoughts about media responsibility over here. And on we go.
A strange format can focus the mind wonderfully. Kilimanjaro has to be designed around its unusual size, as does iLove. Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern is regularly rethought depending on the demands of each issue’s format, as is the Colophon-selected La Más Bella. In fact, regular readers will know that I curated an entire exhibition about such object lessons in strange formats, so it’s hardly surprising that I’m looking forward to spinning a copy of Freestyle, the forthcoming design / lifestyle magazine designed to fit inside a frisbee. Y’know, for grown-up kids.
Colophon is now Twittering!
Follow us all the way to Luxembourg – and then receive updates on talks and events during the festival. Also some early spreads from our forthcoming book are now viewable (click on the small images)
Docu recalls the love behind legendary New Orleans independent mag
I can’t imagine anything more opposite to The September Issue
Designer returns to his pet project: Diamante magazine
John describes it as “printed using letterpress, screen-print, lithography, die-cut, foil-block, a range of materials, inks and whatever I feel appropriate at the time.” He’s creating 6 issues a year, printing only 300 of each issue and selling them for (I think) £12 each. You can see some pics of the lovely-looking first edition here (PDF). A handful of subscriptions remain – email him for more information
Another online photography magazine launches
A great start, too. Following on from 1000 Words, and others, it seems that love of great photography is leading to some of the most interesting online magazines so far
Prada asks fashion editors to decorate their windows
Who’s doing product placement now?
Digimag Spektacle cryptically returns
It’s not a real suburban village, I promise. Somewhere I have their first edition from 2001, that came on a mini CD-Rom. They’re still experimenting with the strange combination of fashion and QR codes, now with iPhone reader. I can just never be bothered to take the picture and do the searching
Great magazine covers, daily
Not sure who we have to thank, but thanks (and thanks René for the heads-up)
Crisis roundup
Craft closes
Make survives. The spin-offs keep on spinning away
Guardian prints a publishers’ report card
I know things are bad, but there’s no need for those unfunny puns
“I guess I started a magazine because I knew almost nothing about print.”
It may not sound like the best time to buy an entire magazine, but that’s just what Lothar Eckstein has done. Twice.
The founder and editor-in-chief of sleek magazine, in November he bought two of his favourite independent magazines, Qvest and Luna, from German company Mediakom, to create a stable of three fashion magazines under the umbrella of B20 Publishing.
He talked exclusively to the Blogsplosion, sharing tales of independence, economies of scale and the future of magazine advertising.
On Thursday evening, The September Issue (whose tagline is the not-inaccurate “Fashion is a religion. This is its Bible.“) premiered in Salt Lake City as part of the Sundance Film Festival. It’s a documentary telling the story of the creation of the September 2007 issue of Vogue – a mammoth 840 page edition (of which 727 were ads).
I’ve only found one review so far, and it seems the film is about the battle between Anna Wintour and creative director Grace Coddington, a battle for humanity’s soul and the right to accessorise properly. All of which suggests bitchy, stress-filled office fun, especially for those either nosy or nostalgic for the days when magazines carried advertising – though it’ll probably be more of a busman’s holiday for many of us. Arthouse distribution seems almost guaranteed, especially if the vultures end up making Wintour angry enough to walk out.
Two minutes of short clips and the rather hairy director talking here:
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