Section
The Looking Glass
Mirrors, photographs, film and the machinery of self regard
Every new way of fixing an image has quietly rewritten what a face was supposed to look like.
- 01
The mirror as an object, and what it did to the face
For most of history a clear reflection of your own face was rare, expensive and small. What changed when it became cheap is genuinely debated.
- 02
When photography rewrote what a face was supposed to look like
Early photographic emulsions could not see red. That fact changed how skin, freckles and lips appeared, and what people did about them.
- 03
The close up, and the face as landscape
Cinema enlarged the face to the size of a wall and lit it from a fixed direction. Makeup, and the idea of a good face, changed to suit.
- 04
Retouching before Photoshop
Pencil on the negative, knife on the emulsion, airbrush on the print. Photographs have been edited since the 1850s, and the arguments have not changed.
- 05
Colour film, and whose skin it was calibrated for
Colour film stock had to be balanced against a reference. For decades that reference was a single kind of face, and the consequences are documented.
- 06
The front facing camera and the third rewriting
A wide lens held at arm's length, a live filter and an audience of one. The third great rewriting of the face is the first that happens in real time.
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