Retouch

For the retouching project, I transformed myself into a dragonfly-human hybrid, resembling a pixie. I reformed my bone structure with highlights, altered the color of my skin to camouflage with an insect world, changed the makeup of my pupils and eye-shape, gave myself the implied ability to fly. The dragonfly itself often being a symbol of transformation, I used this assignment to explore the ways new technologies, like Photoshop, transform our perceptions and identities through images. By rearranging our physical appearances and viewing altered images under the pretense of reality, we make the natural into something fantastical. This transformation of reality and nature makes every picture a story, a kind of myth. This myth is then taken into ourselves as we translate it in relation to our identities and understandings. I'm interested in how this technology gives us the freedom to alter ourselves and how others understand us. At the same time, I think an image can be taken for granted as being natural truth, which presents a kind of danger in the confusion and false assumptions that we may make off of that pretense. It makes me think of Photoshop with a sense of whimsy and foreboding, much as I view fairy tales.