Plastic Surgery Projects

I decided to research into other projects photographers had done on plastic surgery to see what kind of things had already been done. 

Ji Yeo

"Beauty Recovery Room is a recent series of photographs that were taken in Korea directly after women had undergone plastic surgery operations. Raw and honest, these images are difficult to look at yet hard to turn away from, each one revealing the physical cost that many Korean women bear by adhering to social pressures of attaining beauty—specifically, a more Western look."

Her images show the side of recovery in hospital and all the waiting that has to be done after having such major operations. 

Cara Phillips 

"Brooklyn, New York-based photographer Cara Phillips has a history with the beauty industry as a former child model and makeup artist in luxury department stores. As she explains to PDN via e-mail, “Those experiences profoundly shaped my self-esteem and left me with a legacy of body and eating issues.” Phillips’s long-term project called “Singular Beauty” examines the world of cosmetic surgery from a unique point of view. “In 2006, I began photographing the interiors and tools of beauty providers which became ‘Singular Beauty.’ From the very beginning I was interested in how [photography] could allow me to confront my personal demons by re-framing my experiences into a larger cultural context–and then translating those ideas into a two-dimensional object that could communicate to others.” 

Cara has shown a very different approach to anything I have seen yet, showing the equipment used for different surgeries had. 

Phillip Toledano

"Phillip Toledano’s photos in his series “A New Kind of Beauty” have many traits of a traditional portrait, but his subjects are far from average. Toledano documents people who have gone through radical reconstructive plastic surgery.

“In 50 or 100 years time, I think humanity won’t look like it does today because of technology. … We will be able to redefine what it means to look human and I think these people are the vanguard of that type of evolution,” Toledano said about the project."

I find his images really fascinating the way they are photographed is really quite beautiful. These people have all had major surgeries on themselves to make themselves 'perfect' and I feel like they all have quite a similar look to them. Big lips, big boobs, muscles, no wrinkles. No expressions, whether they can even have facial expressions would be interesting to find out, as some people have had so much surgery there expressions always look the same.

I really like all three of these projects each is very very different and shows a different side to what surgery is like. I feel like Phillip is right when he says this is what humans are going to look like in the future, I think it will get to a point where you will look like the strange unusual one if you haven't had surgery instead of the other way round. Natural beauty isn't a thing anymore.