Two Worlds Collide

I think that Keith Cottinghams work "Fictitious Portraits" really relates to the lecture, "Two worlds Collide", in that the work is a manipulation of the real thing. Cottingham manipulates the photos by including drawings, wax sculptures and pictures of real people and mixes in himself to make the pictures. These also include different gendars of people and people of different ages. So in actuallality, none of his pictures are even real. They are just digital manipulations. Of course he does this in an artistic way to show his views and to challenge the modernist notions of personhood. He also wants to show us with his artwork that the core of personhood is dependent upon the body.I personally am not a big fan of the works of either Cottingham or Aziz and Cucher but i can relate to why they are doing their art that way. Its just not something that i really like. Just like the pictures arent actually real, the lecture shows us that not all pictures are real either. Photographic manipulation has gone on for over a hundred years. Starting with the iconic picture of Abraham Lincoln, who just happens to have borrowed the body of John Calhoun in his famous 1860 picture, to almost every picture that you and i see in certain magazines. Even National Geographic digitally manipulated their picture of the pyramids on the cover of their 1982 magazine.
Of course when manipulation is done to make people look better it can have a poor effect on those who think its real.When i watched the Dove video on self esteem it was really weird to see the girl, who could have been any jane doe, turn into an almost perfect 10 on the billboard with the manipulation of the photograph.It made it seem as if anyone could walk off the street and sit in that chair and be transformed into a perfect specimen. Its almost sad to see how our young ones are brought up to think that all of these models are real people. These girls not only receive outlandish pampering with their hair, makeup and even overall body color, but then they are digitally airbrushed and altered to make them look even better. I dont understand why a girl cannot model in these magazines as is. I mean even a gorgeous model isnt really good enough for these covers. Imagine how a growing teen girl is going to feel, because she cannot live up to what we have manipulated in her favorite teen magazine. Shes going to have no self worth or self esteem.
I think that digital technology is great if used in the right way. When it is altered to change the look of someone to conform to what a perfect specimen is i think it is wrong. In that sense i like what Keith Cottingham says about his work, "In effect we are race, gender and age, yet, because the self is fluid and able to change we cannot be reduced to these exterior attributes". Hopefully when i raise my children they will not have to self esteem issues because magazines and photographers.