There is a new word, (it might not officially be a word yet) that has found its way into my vocabulary. Grandocide, a word that describes the process of degrading a famous persons looks, reputation, or image. Our society is fascinated with fame, and the creation of new celebrities. We place them on top of a mountain, then the process of character assassination begins. In the beginning it starts slowly. If the celebrity in the cross-hairs is wise and smart they can manage their press coverage, and in effect manage their public image. The less savvy get to see their off moments, awkward body posture, and cellulite in full color at the Supermarket check out counter.

This type of photography exists because there is a market for it. A very healthy market in fact that is very lucrative. From time to time stories about photographers behaving badly make the news, especially when something tragic happens as a result of a Paparazzi chase. These chase scenes take place as a result of the high financial reward for getting "the shot" and having it first. It's easy for us to sit back and pass judgment, to quickly decide on the ethics these photographers are lacking. The blame does not stop there unfortunately. The national sales figures for "Entertainment" magazines is high. Our society seems to have a very large appetite for gossip and supermarket tabloid shallowness. We are a society of Gawkers. Astonishingly, we easily accept the fictional copy that accompanies these photos. The competition between entertainment publishers sometimes runs right over what might be referred to as facts. Character assassination is not confined to the entertainment industry. One only needs to turn your head towards politics to view another version of this national form of entertainment. For now I'll restrict the scope of this blog to entertainment only.

There was a time when "Hollywood" had what is referred to as the studio system of actors and actresses. Well paid photographers were on staff or contract to produce beautiful publicity photographs of the stars. Today these photos are considered art. They exercised full control over a stars public image. No embarrassing moments made the national tabloids. In fact, if someone published a story that was detrimental to a star's image and perhaps career, they did not get any more information on that star or any other in the studio's control. In a gradual process over several decades a market was created and thrived, a market based upon rumor, innuendo, and catching an embarrassing photo moment. We are the consumers that provide the finance that drives this market. Why is our society mesmerized by this? Is it the same reason we slow down to look at a car wreck? The digital age brings photographs and stories of this type as close as a mouse click. Its all right there, the next click away. As viewers should we be making an ethical choice to stop clicking on images of the next celebrity train wreck? Ansel Adams is quoted as saying "In every photograph there are two people, the photographer and the viewer". This puts the responsibility right on us. We provide the market by the choices we make.

Famous people by definition lack the privacy that the not so famous enjoy. This issue is a tricky one to sort out. On a professional level publicity is important to celebrities. This publicity helps make their profession possible. Information about their lives is used to market their image and the entertainment products they are responsible for. As a human being, celebrities should have some parts of their lives off limits. They have a right to expect some degree of personal space. Certainly, their children should be off limits to the Paparazzi frenzy. They are not the stars, nor do they have a choice in the matter. Relaxing privately in their back yards is not an unreasonable expectation. In my opinion, there is an "on" and an "off" that is a reasonable expectation. Celebrities are on when they do anything that can enhance or market their product. They are off, when conducting their day to day living activities. These days the line between the public and private have been blurred for famous people. We all can recall examples of public figures that will resort to any means to get publicity. Closing points to ponder from Susan Sontag; In 1977, Susan Sontag suggested that, "in teaching a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing"(On Photography). Ms. Sontag's text invites us to think about questions of power, and the relationship between subject, photographer, and viewer.

What is beauty? Is there a standard by which beauty can be determined? Journalist Ester Honig sent a photograph of herself to editors in eighteen countries plus the European Union. She requested that they edit her photo to make her beautiful. Looking at the resulting photographs is fascinating. They differ in skin tone, bone structure, makeup, and apparent ethnicity. Viewing the images brings to mind very quickly, questions about how we identify ourselves. Is our place in the society we live in affected by what we look like? There is the old saying, "you never get a second shot at a first impression".

The standard for photo post processing is Adobe Photoshop. This highly complex software can do most anything the artist's imagination conjurors up. Only the skill level of the editor limits the results. The fact that different cultures have different concepts of beauty is not surprising at all. What did surprise me was how Ms. Honig's ethnicity seemed to morph from country to country. Another obvious fact that jumped out at me was the wide range of skill levels of the editor from photo to photo. In most photographs, her skin was given the soft treatment. Lenses in today's cameras are very sharp and can reveal every pore if that is what is wanted. Quite a few of the images were processed to add what seemed to me as to much makeup. This is my personal bias that given a chance to edit, would have been given a lighter treatment. The shape of her face also changed from country to country. At times rounder, then at other times longer and thinner. Her hair did not escape the editors brush. Here geographical preferences seemed obvious, and helped her image adopt the local ethnic preferences. Some editors of more conservative cultures added clothing to her bare shoulders. From my point of view, and of course this is also a bias, the Photographs from Bulgaria and Italy seemed to enhance the image to local beauty standards, and at the same time remain most accurate. In no two photographs did her skin tone match the "before" photograph provided by Ms. Honig. This could be due to monitor calibration, or lack thereof. The possibility exists also that this could be an edit choice.

According to Dr. Gordon Patzer, who has concluded 3 decades of research on physical attractiveness, human beings are hard-wired to respond more favorably to attractive people: “Good-looking men and women are generally regarded to be more talented, kind, honest and intelligent than their less attractive counterparts.” Patzer contends, “controlled studies show people go out of their way to help attractive people—of the same sex and opposite sex—because they want to be liked and accepted by good-looking people.” Even studies of babies show they will look more intently and longer at attractive faces, Patzer argues, (Wired for Success How to fulfill your potential by Ray B. Williams). In my opinion, it seems that what we perceive as beauty is a mix of culture and biology. There are opposite forces pulling against each other at work here. On the one hand, we strive to treat everyone the same, at the same time our preferences of beauty are shaped by where we live and develop in our younger years. The media, entertainment and fashion industries play a big role in shaping societies opinion on beauty. Social and cultural influences can vary from liberal to very conservative.

It just might be time to question your own concept of what is beautiful. This is not a radical thought here, just a nudge to be more open minded. As the saying goes, question everything. Ask yourself, am I 100% invested in the media's version of beauty? Walk around with that thought, and work on being open and conscious with your opinion about beauty. The standard set by the advertising, entertainment, and fashion industries is an illusion. Real people do not look like that. In fact, the people in the media do not look like that.

Recently I've been spending lots of time with a family restoration project. The photographs are black and white on double weight paper, and were produced in the middle 1940's. As you might expect, the images have lost contrast, and there is visible yellowing. What is so fascinating to me about these images is that I was very very young at the time these photos where made. In these photographs, stuck in time are my Mom and Dad, aunts and uncles, cousins, and even my sister.

A consequence of photographic restoration is spending a lot of time looking at the same image at high magnifications. In most of my restoration projects I do not know the people in the photograph. My focus is on the tools and techniques I use to pull out as much quality as possible. The same is true with this batch of work, however an added element is that I am seeing family members at a young age. On the screen aunts and uncles forever in their twenties are frozen mid gesture. Clothing and hair styles rendered in black and white give a classic movie effect to the scene. World War II has been over for a few years, Swing music is still popular, men wore double breasted suits, and style was still king. When I zoom in to repair some damage it is easy for me to get side tracked and try to figure out the food on the table, or the label on a bottle of wine. Then there is the out of place expression on a face, that sparks my curiosity. My memory wants to keep its reference point. There is a face that is familiar, who is that? Some family members were always adults weren't they? Yes, there's Mom and Dad looking so young. The urge to talk to them across the decades can't be resisted. Grandma and Grandpa sitting on their living room couch, behind them a floral wallpaper I never committed to memory. Further into the project a bedroom dresser that I remember well. The color and pattern of the wood always fascinated me. I wonder what happened to it?

Now I'm back to being a photographer, and I'm guessing the camera that made these shots was either a Speed Graphic or a Crown Graphic. The slow film and lenses produced a shallow depth of field, even with flash bulbs. When you fired the flash they'd give off a pop and turn gray. They remained very hot for a while, you needed to be careful when you touched them. Returning to the restoration, this image shows quite a bit of damage at high magnification. I am grateful for Photoshop, it will do a good job in a much shorter time than a darkroom restoration. I've done a few of those and have no desire to turn back the clock to those days. As I progress through all the images real progress takes place and there are now more images restored and archived than there are to the end of my project. Still, I've saved the really damaged one's till the end and my work will only get slower. Damage ranges from bits of missing emulsion, to water damage, to lots of white specks and scratches. The worst is when damage goes through a persons eye. Repairing damage that travels through a face and eye is challenging because the person needs to remain looking like themselves.

Regardless of years of experience, this process still seems like magic to me. Especially when I am holding a well done restoration in my hand, the people and composition come alive and look so real. It's no wonder that some primitive people thought that to photograph someone was to steal their soul. Just for a second imagine being transported back to the mid 1940's and attempting to explain the digital capture and storage we take for granted these days. Imagine trying to explain that almost all of us here in 2014 will carry a gadget in our pockets, that is a telephone, camera, address book, calender, and can give you directions how to drive anywhere. Oh, and is also good at Solitaire. Zooming in on a Chemical process photograph, with each tap of the key the image gets bigger and soon begins to fall apart. Get close enough, and all you see is an abstract pattern. Zoom out far enough and there are people who are part of your personal history, captured on film, forever stuck in time.