DAmroze wrote:

Is it a matter of what's beautiful ,or what's marketable?
40 years ago Tyra Banks would have been considered ugly for no other reason than her
ethnicity.
I resent the commodification of beauty for the same reason that I resent the
commodification of religion. Things that  are given to us as a gift of the spirit (however one
understands that ) are twisted and made ugly by the desire for wealth and uniformity.
Our ideas of beauty programmed into us by the mass media often blind us to true beauty.
Truly beautiful women often have their natural gifts destroyed by cosmetic surgery in
the name of conforming to the fashion of the moment. All because we tell our daughters that
they are not valued unless they fit within certain ranges of dress size , age , nose to cheekbone
ratio , whatever.
The delicate babys breath , the passionate rose , the gothic orchid, the opulent sunflower,
all have something to teach us about the poetry of the soul.

  Aum Shakti !      Ya Devi !    Jai Mata Ki !

OMG WONDERFUL POST! You speak my language, lol! TRUTH and reason!

DAmroze wrote:
From dictionary.com :

beauti·ful·ly adv.
beauti·ful·ness n.
Synonyms: beautiful, lovely, pretty, handsome, comely, fair
1 All these adjectives apply to what excites aesthetic admiration. Beautiful is most comprehensive: a beautiful child; a beautiful painting; a beautiful mathematical proof. Lovely applies to what inspires emotion rather than intellectual appreciation: “They were lovely, your eyesâ€? (George Seferis). What is pretty is beautiful in a delicate or graceful way: a pretty face; a pretty song; a pretty room. Handsome stresses poise and dignity of form and proportion: a very large, handsome paneled library. “She is very pretty, but not so extraordinarily handsomeâ€? (William Makepeace Thackeray). Comely suggests wholesome physical attractiveness: “Mrs. Hurd is a large woman with a big, comely, simple faceâ€? (Ernest Hemingway). Fair emphasizes freshness or purity: “In the highlands, in the country places,/Where the old plain men have rosy faces,/And the young fair maidens/Quiet eyesâ€? (Robert Louis Stevenson).


  So then, what "excites aesthetic admiration " ?
Is J-lo's butt any more or less beautiful then Twiggy's ? Or Gloria Swansons ( see for instance
her silent classic "Sadie Thompson .").
Or did something change in the marketing demographic in the last few decades?
Or , is what we're told is beauty something that actually bears as much relation
to real "beauty " as a b---rbie ( self censored because Mattel can afford bigger lawyers then I ) doll bears to a real woman ?
  Do the images in the Si swimsuit issue or Peoples 50 most beautiful issue  represent 'beauty '
in any meaningful sense of the word, or , is it something else that we are being told is beauty
for some nefarious purpose ?

I love your posts.

Dave Krueger wrote:
I'd love to shoot a bald woman and it would not be to portray ugly, but very much to portray something out of the ordinary. 

-Dave

I'm right behind you on that one....

Dave Krueger wrote:
This thread is about physical beauty.  We're talking about images, after all.  My point was that by labeling everything beautiful, you essentially make the word meaningless.  I've heard a number of people say that everyone is beautiful in some way.  You just have to capture it.   Everyone is beautiful to someone.  It's all in the eye of the beholder.  etc, etc.

I think I've argued that everyone is not outwardly beautiful and I'll stick by that assertion.  The very fact that many people find it difficult to admit that not everyone is physically beautiful says something about the value we assign to that attribute.  It's an admission of how, by our very human nature, we tend to value people according to their attractiveness.  That's especially true of people we do not know very well.  To say someone isn't beautiful is to say they don't have as much significance.  So we hand out the compliment freely as a sign of our appreciation for the importance of everyone.

I think a considerable number of the women who are members here, want to think of themselves as models because what better proof of one's beauty than to hold the coveted title of "model".  And I mean proof to both themselves as well as others.

Nowhere in this thread do I suggest that a person who is ugly is of less intrinsic value as a human being than someone who it stunningly attractive.  I only make the point that, in terms of a visual image, physical beauty has great value and I think it's every bit as honorable to appreciate the very rarity of stunning beauty as it is to appreciate the rarity of great genius.

I think that is more clear to me know than when we first started discussing it.

-Dave

agreed.

Dave Krueger wrote:
I disagree.  Not only that, but I believe that even the people saying that don't believe it, although they probably think it sounds compassionate and deep.

wrong...you've obviously never met me.

Dave Krueger wrote:
When I look for a model, I don't want just anyone.  I want the best I can get for the money.

Here's your whole problem in a nutshell:  Beauty isn't something you buy.  What you're talking about is marketability which has little or nothing to do with beauty.  It's why Van Gough [who never made money] hangs in museums while Norman Rockwell [who made lots] hangs on drugstore calendars.  Both approaches are valid, but certainly not the same.

Dave Krueger wrote:
Nowhere in this thread do I suggest that a person who is ugly is of less intrinsic value as a human being than someone who it stunningly attractive.  I only make the point that, in terms of a visual image, physical beauty has great value and I think it's every bit as honorable to appreciate the very rarity of stunning beauty as it is to appreciate the rarity of great genius.
-Dave

I agree.  I think that sums up the point of this thread. I once had a friend whose overuse of the words "f-ing amazing" to describe everything rendered them absolutely meaningless.

Dave Krueger wrote:
Nowhere in this thread do I suggest that a person who is ugly is of less intrinsic value as a human being than someone who it stunningly attractive.  I only make the point that, in terms of a visual image, physical beauty has great value and I think it's every bit as honorable to appreciate the very rarity of stunning beauty as it is to appreciate the rarity of great genius.

I think that is more clear to me know than when we first started discussing it.

-Dave

I think this deserves a "bingo" as a good, and concise thought. I feel the struggle of an artist here. Great beauty is so much more than a pretty face. Which is not to say a just pretty face can't be beautiful. Boy all of that sounded like garbage I'm sure only make sense to me.

Ok here comes a ramble; so, bare with me.

It is times like this I am glad to be an amateur. I shot for my on pleasure and can say screw the rest of the world. If you don't like it I don't care. It is easy when your not trying to please a client. So yeah I guess there is a commercial type of beauty. Depending on the client that idea of beauty sure can change. One model would be perfect for one client and totally wrong for another and both could be considered to be a  beautiful. I guess the old saying, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" certainly applies and here the client eye is all that counts.

I too feel that great beauty should be appreciated and held in very high regard. I guess the problem is deciding what is great beauty. An even bigger problem for us as photographers and models is capturing and portraying that beauty. I look so often at my photographs and feel so inadequate when it comes to capturing that beauty.

Capturing that certain something that comes flooding through with really great beauty that is so much more than the mere physical outward "pretty" is the real struggle. Being able to do this is what makes the difference between real genius artists and mere craftsman. More often than not I feel like a craftsman. My photos are technically well done, well composed and something anyone that knows there way around a camera can produce. I struggle to move to that next level. I struggle to become an artist that can capture that certain something that is true beauty. I struggle to create something that goes way beyond "a pretty picture". I want to get to the point where an image moves somebody much more deeply. So deeply it stirs the viewers soul.

I may not to want to do that with every image. Some images are just for fun. Some are just to record a moment or tell a little story. Heck I even take some just to create a pretty picture.

But every so often I want to move to that next level. To get something out of my head. Make an image that makes people think. To make an image that goes way past the the mere pretty. I want to hit that soul stirring home run. I worry it is the type of thing that leads to madness.

Oh well enough rambling. Real life and earning a meager living calls. The artist inside me will have to wait for awhile.

please ignore typos, poor spelling and bad sentence structure ... remember it was a ramble :^)

Bill
http://www.pbase.com/slowpokebill

Jack D Trute wrote:
If everything is beautiful, nothing is beautiful.

Only someone without a dog would say such a thing.

I like you...if my dog weren't a boy, I'd hook you two up...hehe...but we don't need a brokebark mountain, now, do we?

Rick Edwards wrote:
ahh...the sound of one hand clapping

Rick is beautiful!! 

Dave Krueger wrote:
I keep seeing post after post about how all models are beautiful if only you know how to capture their beauty.

Sorry, folks.  I disagree.  Not only that, but I believe that even the people saying that don't believe it, although they probably think it sounds compassionate and deep.

When I look for a model, I don't want just anyone.  I want the best I can get for the money.  She's not going to be an average girl who just decided she wants to model.  She's going to meet a number of the criteria of what presently defines the popular concept of beauty, plus a few of my own. 

Personally, when you start assigning the beautiful label to everyone, you have diminished the value of the word to the point of making it useless.  Beauty is relative to ugly.  Without ugly, you have no beauty.

So there.

-Dave

It's all about relativity..

Everyone is beautiful.... To somebody..  You don't have to agree with my standards.. As long as I don't have to agree with yours..

And as far as diminishing the word.. I'd rather diminish a word than a person..

Usually..