When I was in college in Boulder and doing some modeling in Denver (think big earrings and pleather), my booker called my apartment. I wasn’t home, so she asked my roommate, “Do you know where Jill got her headshot?”
“Excuse me?” replied my roommate, envisioning bloody chunks of brain. Of course my booker was referring to the close-up on the front of my comp card.
Now Swedish retailer H&M is giving new meaning to the term by plunking headshots onto computer-generated bodies. In other words, they’re booking models and shooting just headshots, which takes a fraction of the time it takes to have a model change into various looks, a stylist style those outfits, and a photographer shoot the model in a range of poses. All this translates into reduced work and income for everyone except graphic designers, not to mention a greater temptation to lipo those cyber bodies into unattainable proportions.
The plus: if a model is feeling a bit bloated or her butt expanded over the holidays, no biggie; the camera’s not capturing anything below the neck. But as nice as guilt-free gorging may be, let’s hope other clients don’t follow H&M’s lead. I’ve shopped at H&M since ’92 in Germany—models in Munich loved getting Quelle catalog bookings in Nuremberg, because H&M was in the mall across the street from the studio. Now that H&M is right here in the States, it’s a shame I may have to boycott them.
What do you think, cyber bodies: cool or lame?
