Esther Honig, a Kansas City-based radio journalist, contacted artists from forty different countries, emailing them her self portrait. Honig's only request was to "make her look beautiful." Even if an artist replied with questions, the only way Esther would elaborate was to say she wanted them to make her look like a popular fashion model.
Honig's requests yielded replies from 27 countries. The Photoshopped results were strikingly different by country, from garish makeup jobs (Philippines, Argentina) to a hijab (Morocco). The artist from India was apparently dissatisfied with the bones in her clavicle, so they were erased. Even countries like Great Britain, Israel and Bulgaria, which kept makeup and hair relatively natural, noticably changed Honig's (already beautiful, in my opinion) grey eye color. Eyebrows in some cases were made thicker and darker. Nose shape was slightly shaved down by some. In the end, no country simply put light makeup on Esther's unmade face and called it beauty.
I suppose we all could have predicted that the results would be wildly varied. But the variances do provide some interesting "people watching," all from just one person's face. See more shots from Honig's series, which she calls Before and After, at her website. Via Beautiful Decay.
Images Credit: Esther Honig
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