Not at all - it's a perfectly good way of providing useful work in these troubled times. I have a friend, Winston Smith, who is a civil servant with the Ministry of Truth. His job consists of spending most of the day on Google Images looking for pictures of people smoking; he then removes the offending cigarette, cheroot or hookah and writes the image back onto Google's servers. The past must reflect today's orthodoxy. He's a very interesting chap. We met a few months ago when I had a day off and was walking along Whitehall. I stopped to ask directions while he was standing down an alleyway next to the Minitrue office, having a cigarette break.
> Anthony, > > What struck me when going through those web archives was that so few > of her portraits featured a cigarette. Makes me wonder how extensive > the history rewriting is... Somehow it's difficult to believe that > they've systematically removed every little fag they could come over > just because public attitude has shifted away from smoking. It would > be very scary indeed if they did. > > Jostein > > 2008/10/13 Anthony Farr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > >> -----Original Message----- > >> From: AlunFoto > >> (snip) > >> Now it looks like the artist has "improved" the shot to hint at her > >> smoking habit. (snip) > > > > Agreed. It seems to me that the artist, with access to the > unaltered > > original (which we haven't found on the web), has omitted > the cigarette at > > his client's (US Postal Service)request, but changed little > else. The > > earlier airbrush retouching seems more invasive in order to > resolve the > > 'empty hand' effect that just erasing the cigarette > creates. I suspect that > > the postage stamp rendition is more authentic than the > "Bette Davis Speaks" > > version of the picture, within the limitations of political > correctness. > > Apparently the postage stamp artist wants us to know that > the cigarette is > > missing, but the biography artist wanted to conceal the fact. > > > > Regards, Anthony -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
