#photoshopshop

[sewlastcentury]

More reversing Victorian-era photo retouching for size.... Original photo at left; I’m not sure about this one, but the curve under her bust is just a tad too unnatural-looking, both in overall shape (and bodice details/placement) and in the cleanness of the edges in the photo. Right is my guess as to what her actual shape was according to the underbust shadow and the placement of the center of the bodice. 

(Unidentified woman, photograph by Oswald Welti (1843-1932), Montreux/Lausanne, Switzerland, 1880s. Collection of Kenna Libes, #23.25. Do not repost without credit.)

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[sewlastcentury]

More uno-reverse-carding Victorian photo retouching. This woman, already pretty slim, must have wanted a smaller waist. Her photographer granted her wish in post (and now I’m unediting it, 130 years later). While a lot of edits are easy to piece out - see the bits of discoloration around her waist? - really good retouchers could blend them in with the background. There’s no way of knowing how many existing images were actually retouched, but I’m betting it’s a lot more than we think. Perhaps this is a shocking revelation, but most women did not have 18″ waists!

(Unidentified woman, photograph by Aterlier Adolf Kolle, Göttingen, Germany, c. 1893. Collection of Kenna Libes, #23.81. Do not repost without credit.)

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[sewlastcentury]

Spot the difference!

I recently added this carte de visite (left) to my collection of stout historical ladies. It was clearly retouched after it was taken and before the positive print was created - see the grain around her waist and left hip? The photographer ‘carved out’ negative space there to make her appear smaller/curvier. I ran it through Photoshop to try to restore what she might originally have looked like (right).

This was very common in period, and I have a bunch of images in my collection that show signs of retouching like this - but good retouchers could alter images without leaving behind traces like this, so we’ll never know how many pictures are floating around out there pretending to be unretouched...

(Unidentified woman, photograph by Atelier Bavaria, Munich, Germany, c. 1895. Collection of Kenna Libes, #23.75. Do not repost without credit.)

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[sewlastcentury]

This woman's waist was neatly (if unconvincingly) carved out with retouching after it was taken. I've reverse-photoshopped it to see what she originally looked like - definitely stout!

These images complicate narratives about all people in the past being small as well as that being fat was a symbol of wealth that people admired. Clearly, neither is true - and people would not have been retouching their waists smaller if fatness was an entirely positive thing.

David Hutson (2017) has published about the continuum of body size in the 19th century, making a good argument that it was entirely context-dependent - and that most people preferred to neither be particularly thin nor particularly fat.

(Unidentified woman, photograph by Atelier Gusch, Vienna, Germany, c. 1894. Collection of Kenna Libes, #23.118. Do not repost without credit.)

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[sewlastcentury]

Two small edits were made to this image after it was taken, probably at the request of the woman in the photo. The photographer carved out a piece of her waist as well as a sliver of her hips on both sides. While she isn’t particularly stout, it’s clear that she didn’t have a naturally small waist, and either didn’t want to or was unable to lace it down with corseting. Due to the rough nature of the editing, it was easy for me to tell how far to restore her form to find the original look.

(Unidentified woman, photograph by Atelier B. Wehle, Dresden, late 1890s. Collection of Kenna Libes, #23.43. Do not repost without credit.)

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[sewlastcentury]

Another go at reversing Victorian-era photo editing! SO many portraits from this era are edited - skin smoothing, flyaways, snatching the waist, you name it. This woman had a judicious slice of her waist and hip taken away, making it look like her waist was smaller as well as lengthening it, which was the fashionable look for around 1880.

(Unidentified woman, photograph by Martin Brothers, Augsburg, Germany, c. 1880. Collection of Kenna Libes, #23.77. Do not repost without credit.)

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[sewlastcentury]

Last reverse-retouched image for now: The chair leg is suspiciously dark, and you can see an odd shadow on the portion below the arm. Definitely retouched right after it was taken! I’ve made an attempt at restoring what she probably looked like - small bust, big belly.

(Unidentified woman, photograph by Atelier Seyser, Magdeburg, Germany, c. 1905. Collection of Kenna Libes, #23.91. Do not repost without credit.)

[Posts in this series are tagged #photoshopshop]