What happens when a human interest reporter dishes out her original photograph to 40 photo editors across 25 different parts of the world and asks them to make her look stunning? Ask Esther Honig. In an attempt to bear the perfect look, Honig ended up getting an extreme makeover with each photo reflecting a mix of various different cultures.
It is not at all surprising that photo artists from each country applied a varied perspective on the photograph and let the image scream his/her own respective culture. Esther Honig was rather surprised by the response of many photo editors. She was particularly taken aback by the cultural values that an image, received from Morocco, reflected.
Her email to Huffington Post sums it up: “definitely highlighted my own lack of cultural awareness. Of course, someone from a country where the primary religion is Islam might elect to add a Hijab to my image as that aligns with their own cultural customs. For me it really added depth to my project by touching on the concept of religion and custom, not just aesthetics.”
Honig is now confident that there’s no such thing as the perfect look. “Overall what I’ve learned from this project is this; Photoshop allows us to achieve our unobtainable standards of beauty, but when we compare those standards on a global scale, achieving the ideal remains all the more illusive.”
