Who Can Improve on Nature? Magazine Editors

Jill Greenberg

The picture of a sheep that was whitened for a Women's Health magazine article on sleep.

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Published: July 20, 2012

The magazine editors knew they had their cover shot. The model, just emerged from a small pond, produced a look for the camera that exuded intelligence and confidence. The only problem was the water droplets clinging to the model’s ears. So the photo editors had the ears retouched and the December 2011-January 2012 issue of Garden and Gun went to press.

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Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Teenage girls with Spark a Movement stage a mock fashion show this month to protest the use of retouched photos of girls in Teen Vogue.

Its flawless cover model: an English Labrador named Deke.

As long as magazines have retouched photos — as long as there have been magazines, basically — there has been a debate about the line between improving an image and outright manipulation, especially in women’s magazines where models are made to look younger and thinner and any blemishes are removed. The debate was revived earlier this month with Seventeen magazine’s announcement that it would “never change girls’ body or face shapes” in the magazine.

But the practice of retouching, once largely confined to fashion spreads and advertisements, has become much more common in recent years across all editorial photography, according to many industry professionals. Skies are made brighter, animals become flawless, grass is made to look greener and, in a recent issue of Women’s Health, sheep were made to look whiter.

The increased manipulation of images has conditioned readers, already accustomed to digital effects in movies and on television, to expect not an accurate photo, but an image that’s a heightened version of the truth.

“There is an impulse I’ve seen over the last several years to improve on reality,” said David Granger, the editor in chief of Esquire, who has had to request stripped-down versions of editorial photographs so that he can understand what the original image looks like. “People think, ‘I should manipulate this to create a more beautiful photo.’ ”

The chief reason retouching has become so prevalent is technological: with digital cameras and computers, anyone can alter a photograph and that shift has driven a change in the business. After Bob Scott, a freelance commercial photographer, shot a professional golfer for a Golf magazine in early 2010, he noticed that the magazine had removed some white specks on the AstroTurf from beneath the golfer’s feet to make the ground look like a flawless green carpet.

Mr. Scott said younger people coming into the profession simply consider it part of the job.

“When you’re graduating out of a university and studying design, you’re coming out with these skills where you’re using Photoshop as a tool,” Mr. Scott said. “They’re creating these plausible realities.”

Retouching has become so prevalent on editorial pages that magazine industry executives have considered introducing guidelines on what is considered acceptable. Sid Holt, chief executive of the American Society of Magazine Editors, said that in the past the industry only established guidelines regarding advertising and editorial conflicts. After much discussion, the society concluded that editors can continue to regulate themselves for now.

“It’s really the responsibility of the individual brands,” Mr. Holt said.

Magazine editors often have widely different interpretations of these standards. Maggie Kennedy, the photography director of Garden & Gun magazine, said that the magazine had removed the water from the cover dog’s ears so that the copy on the cover stood out.

“We’re not altering the animal’s body,” Ms. Kennedy said. “Ours is about accommodating design and copy.”

Margaret Russell, editor in chief of Architectural Digest, said that for covers she is comfortable making skies outside windows bluer and flowers on a table more intense. On the June cover, she had a vase of flowers shifted off-center on a table and she sometimes edits out lighting fixtures on ceilings because it is difficult to read titles over them. But she does not change the color of furniture or remove the Andy Warhol paintings from walls.

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