I have chosen Flori Borsi as one of my contextual artists due to her series titled ‘Stockify’. In this series, Borsi digitally alters photographs of fashion models in rejection of societal and medias beauty standards. With Photoshop being the norm in media, these surreal portraits question what we deem as ‘perfect’ in a persons appearance. It fights back against the often damaging physical expectations forced upon us as consumers, a problem which has been widely discussed in recent years. The editing of photographs in the media has been a growing issue with those who consume it, and has been linked to causing or worsening body issues of people across the world.

“In this project I’ve been analyzing some fashion portraits, how perfect they are. So I made the opposite of retouching, somehow I distouched these pictures of perfect models. This project is connected to surrealist painters point of view: beauty wasn’t enough to give me interest. I love imperfections as much as I love surrealism. These pictures are my little monsters, no one wants to look like them, because they are totally unique.”

This technique is one used before by Borsi, appearing similar to her ‘The Real Life Models’ series. In this series, she distorts models next to famous paintings to reinvent them to look like the painted figures. It’s interesting to me how although the painted figures and the retouched models are both edited versions of real life people, the digital models feel a lot more sinister… It may be due to how this media is more easily available and thus reaches a wider audience, or it could be down to the fact that the editor is directly altering a persons face that already exists.

I am interested in Borsi’s work for my project due to her obvious manipulation of photographs. She is altering these models to question beauty, much like I am through Photoshop. However, although Borsi describes her creations as ‘Monsters’, I am editing myself to make it easier to look at myself. Our reasons for creating this work may differ, but I find relation in her questioning of what beauty really is or can be.