World-renowned photographer Peter Lindbergh has given a candid interview on his thoughts about the use of airbrushing, ahead of the release of his new book.
Speaking with The Times, the Paris-based 72-year-old photographer chatted openly about the controversy of photoshopping women’s facial features, and his preference to avoid doing so.
This year, Lindbergh shot 14 of Hollywood’s most recognizable women for the Pirelli calendar, the mega-budget publishing event that has seen the likes of Tim Walker and Annie Leibovitz contribute in neighboring years. The aim of the shoot was to free women from the ties of airbrushing by capturing them naturally, and that’s something he believes is still relevant now, many months on. So much so, he’s just published hundreds of unseen images, re-iterating his naturalistic style by including pores, fine lines, freckles and under-eye shadows in the final images.
Addressing the journalist’s questions of whether his preference for stripped-back looks scares some of his potential subjects out of sitting for him, he replies: “No! Then they wouldn’t even come. It’s really funny, because sometimes [my subjects will] whisper to me, while we’re shooting, ‘Can you do a little retouching?’ I don’t say no. I say, ‘Ah, we’ll see, we’ll see.’”
Lindbergh recently shot a Vanity Fair cover with British actress Meghan Markle, who expressed her delight at Lindbergh’s decision to include her freckles in the images from their shoot.
Pledging his allegiance to photographs that are “real,” he says, “It’s not that I care about being truthful. It’s the only thing I’m interested in.”
See images from the book at The Times.
[via The Times]
Lead image credit: Tranmautritam
Really interesting!
I think so! One of my subtle favourites