March 20, 2008

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The Aesthetic of Us Weekly Can Be Yours

Kottke points out a crazy new kind of portraiture:

Using information provided earlier about their weekly routine, the photographer will arrive on the scene, and unseen, take shots of the subject. The subject will be photographed walking through the streets, going about their daily business. Without posing and artifice, the camera captures only the natural beauty of the person.

Why is this awesome? Because the real mark of status is no longer having a fantastic portrait taken, or even getting the massively-photoshopped magazine cover treatment. It’s being surreptitiously photographed leaving Starbucks in your flip-flops.

This is definitely a corollary to the democratization of manipulation. The democratization of observation, maybe?