Out today from Graphic Universe, Sofia Szamosi’s Unretouchable is an unforgettable take on social media and our image-conscious society. It’s about a world that’s everywhere these days but little-known and hugely influential as photo retouching changes how we see the world around us. Instagram Reality on Reddit comes to mind.
“Unretouchable is a fictional coming-of-age story about growing up in an age when we marketed to more than ever through our phones and social media, using retouching apps and beauty filters is the norm, and artificial intelligence has evolved to the point we can never be certain if the digital images and videos we are consuming are real or manipulated,” Szamosi said in a statement sent to AIPT. “The verbs of image editing softwares can be violent: Adjust. Lasso. Crop. Slice. Clone. Burn. Erase. Correct. What makes a person look “correct”? And who is deciding?”
So what’s Unretouchable about?
Olive is spending the summer before art school at a coveted internship, helping one of the fashion industry’s elite digital-imaging specialists. After a glamourous New York photoshoot, she learns that taking pictures is only the first step. She discovers the “violent verbs” (cut, crop, slice, lasso) of image retouching software and the secrets behind “virtual models.”
Soon Olive is fixating on her own appearance and pondering the ethics of her work behind the scenes. As college gets closer, she’ll try to get out of her own head, attempt to quit the Internet, and finally embrace image-making on her own terms. Unretouchable is a window into the little-known, hugely influential world of fashion photography and a tribute to self-acceptance.
Szamosi continued, “Images have a great power – where we choose to look has great power. When we are trained to look in one direction, we are not looking in another. And failing to see things that need to be witnessed can be another form of violence. In the giant machine of image creation and dissemination, real people get caught in the cogs. Our status quo standard of “beauty” devalues the lives, beauties, and experiences of everyone else.
Today, as much as possible, I try to be a conscious consumer and creator of images.”
Unretouchable is a tribute to self-acceptance and is available in bookstores and comic shops this week.
Check out an exclusive excerpt from Unretouchable below!
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