risky pixel business

This photography studio on Jones Street might need a little PR advice. We suspect they’re the kind of place you can go to get a portfolio shot - you know, dress up all pretty, practice your best smile, and feel like a “model”. Or something like that. Then you can put all those photos up on Facebook and have your friends tell you “OMG you are so bootiful lady!!!!!!!”.

Apparently, if you’re a woman, getting your portrait taken at this studio this requires stripping down to a bikini and posing awkwardly with one leg bent, and your head on a tilt. We don’t suggest you try this at home. 

Now we aren’t experts on window dressing, but we get the sense that here the idea is quantity over quality.

There are other complexities in this mix too. Clearly, the designers of this window-door arrangement were concerned that showing naked babies could be construed as exploitative or pornographic, especially in these post-Bill-Henson-drama days.

So - they have quite specifically pixellated a section of this child’s nakedness - you know, so we don’t get turned on by it. (???) The result of this pixellation is pretty disturbing, and kind of looks like the child has an unfortunate genetic defect. The question is - as a parent, taking your child to this studio for their portrait shot, do the photographic agency ask:

“Sir, for this enormous A1 portrait poster of your baby, would you like his bits pixellated or unpixellated? We can also photoshop in a beard and pubic hair, if that is your preference. But the hat - that’s got to stay.”