Kind Of Beauty

Phillip Toledano, a New York based full time experimental artist and photographer of a series of photographs called “A New Kind of Beauty”, brings awareness towards society’s modern standards of beauty through documenting and creating classical portraits of individuals who have had several procedures of reconstructive plastic surgery done on their faces as well as their bodies in desperate search of a flawless body. Toledano’s “A New Kind of Beauty” was inspired by Hans, the Younger Holbein. Hans is a German artist and is also one of the most talented portraitists from the sixteenth century. He was also inspired to join and contribute to the world of photography after watching his father who was a painter and after reading a Bill Brandt book …show more content…
There are more than 500 clinics in the city of Gangnam alone as well as an excessive amount of surgery advertisements near subway stations and any other public areas. Because of the popularity of the Korean pop celebrities, average Koreans do whatever they can despite the money, pain, make and track to resemble these idols. Their purpose for their decision to get cosmetic surgery ranges from wanting to get a job to wanting to get married. After giving the photographs of the portraits a second and even third inspection and thought, I realized that the models in the photographs were actually confident individuals who stood upright and looked proud of themselves in a way. Cosmetic surgery is much more common in South Korea than in America. For example, many female high school students in Korea are rewarded by their parents with cosmetic procedures and enhancements if they excel academically and get admitted into a prestigious college. One out of five females in Korea admitted to have been under the knife. It has become so accepted in South Korea that they like to call the reconstructive cosmetic procedure as a reforming surgery, as if the process is merely represented as the process of a cocoon transforming into a …show more content…
Toledano photographed the portraits in the traditional chiaroscuro style, which deals with the treatment of light and shade in painting. The contrasting light and dark tones in every portrait only emphasize the cosmetically enhanced features of every model. We know that the people in the pictures went through with the procedures in the pursuit of physical contentedness and perfection. In addition to this, these photos were taken against an all black background, leaving the semi-nude models of the photographs to stand out and feel more isolated to the pictures and better resemble the classical sculptures from the