Interview with Gry Garness

I began e-mailing Gry, and sent her this questionnaire, i have abreviated her answers below
1) What kind of work do you normally do? E.g. do people send you their own pictures to adjust, your own photography, advertisements etc
comissioned work for industry photographers, cd sleeves, book covers, advertising and mag features, mainly music and celebs

2) What kind of retouching do you normally do? E.g. lighting corrections, shadows, complexion, or any kind of body adjustments?
Beauty-skin to a previously agreed level, usually absolute perfection
older males, refine the eye bags and lines "aim to make the person appear how they do in real life" camera can be bad to the subject particularly wide angle lenses; i tone down light, lighten dark areas and make colours more vibrant

3) Would you say retouching in general is usually quite subtle work which gets bad press, or does a lot of excessive work e.g. making the person unrecognisable as themselves occur quite frequently?
good retouching is always subtle

4) Who is it that decides how the finished product should look? The private customer or if working on a bigger scale project the art director?
the client has the final say, but the photographer first and then the art-director

5) Have you ever made someone look very different to their original photo either facially or in body size?? If so which, and why was this requested of you?
diferent yes, never the body unless agreed, ppl tend to look more well groomed and positive through many little changes e.g. before and after make-up
6) How did you learn to be a retoucher?
I was a photographer first and hairdresser and make up artist. it requires patience and a good eye for photographic quality as well as anatomy and beauty- there is an overwhelming amount of bungled retouching on the web that bears no resembalence to professinal retouchingor the person. the video's on youtube are evidence of this- entertaining but not educational

7) What made you decide to do this as a career?
Bad back, took the adobe ace exam and now teach photoshop, took me 8 years to build up my portfolio

8) Do you think there is much awareness especially in teenagers and younger children that retouching is used in the Media?
probably an implicit understanding that that ppl who appear in adverts and magazeines get the full works but i can see alot of naivity on the subject particularly in teenage girls. They may know subconsciously but how much do they actually think about it?

9) Do you think images should have to have some regulatory system in order to state if they have been retouched and how much so (say on a scale of 1-5) in order to raise more awareness?
All images would have to have one, fine line- where does colour correction end and retouching begin? a rating would be very difficult, and who would pay for/administer it? should the same be applied to amount of styling, hair , make-up etc?

10) Do you think excessive retouching e.g. body altering can lead to self esteem issues and an ideal of unattainable beauty?
I think about it everyday and constantly battle with clients to keep it looking "real". the camera can also lie and producing as flattering and deceptive effetcs is that equally wrong? beautiful people always cause self esteem issues in others, it depends on how much the individual is exposed and how obsessed the media and sociey become with perfection

11) Why do you think the Media has become so obsessed with producing digitally enhanced images, aren’t people ok the way they are?
they lost the ability to produce fully finished images attitude has turned towards "do it in the post" many editors are becoming facist with their demands for perfection even finding normal things like veins weird.

12) Do you think anything needs to be done in either educating people about the extent to which retouching is used, or restricting how much retouching can be done in the Media e.g. in advertisements and magazine covers?
not a question of how much but quality. unskilled work produces the most extreme misrepresentations- there is no where in the uk where you can learn it in a college, mostly self taught, mai reaosn why i wrote my e-book,

to add;
this is a very complex issue, where is the line? fattening an anorexic model? is exsessive make-up and styling more morally wrong or less?

retouchers are invisible becuase acknowledging a good retouch job is to undermine the subject and photographer.