Haven't I Seen That Before?

Just as its becoming harder to find a new movie that isn't a remake of an old movie, hasn't anyone noticed magazines are plundering their pasts more and more rather than actually creating something new. Esquire, no doubt because of the terrible shortage of Barack Obama images out there this month has recycled a Time Magazine cover rather than come up with something new and dare I say it? Fresh?
Thanks to PDN for catching them out.
Vanity Fair, not content with just recycling old film imagery for its annual Hollywood issue actually assigned Art Streiber to plagiarise himself plagiarising Alfred Hitchcock (he did the same shot with Ernest Lehman back in 1998). Time was that photography was supposed to portray the subject, not allow the subject to be someone, anyone but himself.

And this month's Los Angeles magazines cover shot (by Blake Little) of Abigail Breslin bears an extraordinary resemblance to a wonderful Peggy Sirota image of Jodie Foster, who perhaps only coincidentally was a child star. Editorial meetings must consist these days of staff frantically searching through old magazines looking for images to plunder.

Somewhere the great Alexey Brodovitch is rolling over in his grave. The man whose dictum was 'make it new!' and who gave us the format for the magazine as we know it today would be aghast at the imagery that now saturates the 21st century. No wonder print is in such crisis.
Do people really not want to see anything they haven't seen before? Are there no new ideas anymore?

Comments

[tompaineaz]

I guess you can only fake authenticity one way...

[Yohomegirl]

What's your point?

[JScott]

It's hoping the public has a short memory and sad to say they do.

And is Esquire part of AOLTW? If so that explains.

[4wehttam]

Who cares? He looks yummy nevertheless.

[noneIn2008]

Esquire should also be called on their edit job. This is a horrible photo and is touched very differently than the Time one. The Time version is bad enough, meant to portray a snobbish look. Looking down on us, with arms crossed like the stogy principal.
But, the Esquire photo is badly touched. I see you are true to the version they have on their web site. They made the jacket very rumpled, note shoulder and lapel. The edit on the face is very poor, highlighting extra lines (note ring around mouth), over lightening the forehead, plus more to create a ghoulish look.

[Hugh Hamilton - Huffpost Blogger]

I want to stress that I don't think its the photographers fault. Platon (who took the Obama shot) and Art Streiber are both wonderful photographers, but they have to make a living. This lack of vision comes from above, from an industry with declining circulations living in terror of failure. And I think real vision and real success only comes from not being afraid to fail....

[Chip1222]

Wow! That's fascinating. You'd think that with all the paparazzi and photographers out there, there'd be some creativityl. Everything old is new again.

[arkgrfx61]

Chip - please don't say that - because then that validates the whole Clinton campaign.

[FirstShirt]

Yeah, what we really need is a tabula raza.