In my opinion Greenfield’s portraits are amazing because of their context. Every one of these girls or women showed that they were comfortable opening up to the photographer through pictures and the stories they shared. In terms of form, Greenfield creates great framing and shapes in her pictures. One’s attention always shifts to a specific action or person that is parallel to the story behind the photograph.
Greenfield achieves to expose different aspects of the culture by showing different extremes. In Medina, Minnesota she interviewed two 13 year olds that serve as foils to one another – Lisa and Hannah. Lisa says, “You have to be the same supermodel that everybody else is. Two-pound Gap lover with the same nice haircut, same straight look. You have to walk the same, talk the same…It’s just one big chain of followers”. Lisa explains how every morning when she wakes up she wonders if she is going to get teased because of what she wears or how she looks. Lisa’s portrait is one of my favorite because of the lighting and the framing. The lighting is darker than most pictures and has an orange color to it. I believe that her thoughts and emotions reflect on the dimness of the picture. She almost blends in with the background yet the framing that the wall and pillows in the bed provide makes our attention shift to her.
On the other hand, Hannah is your typical popular girl. Her portrait takes place before the first seventh grade dance. She explains that it took her and her friends three hours to get ready. What I like about Hannah’s portrait is how she stands out among the 3 other girls – the girl on the right is looking at her and her body is the only one turned around. Although she might be the popular Hannah admits, “I’m not exactly sure about the group of friends I’m in right now. Sometimes our friends can be really, really mean. In our group, people get criticized if you don’t look a certain way. If you have a flaw, then you will be criticized whether you like it or not”. It goes to show that the school’s outcast and the “pretty girl” have more in common than they think. It doesn’t matter what clique one might be in, there is always a pressure to look your best at every moment.
The question is, what do the girls with the “perfect body”, the models in the magazines think about this? Interestingly enough Greenfield also photographed Cindy Margolis who according to Guinness Book of World Records she is the most downloaded woman in the internet. Cindy explains that it “kills” her when girls think that they need to look like the women in the magazines and admits that her own pictures are airbrushed. “I know I play into that image out there, but I try to say it is a fantasy. There are probably five people in this whole entire world who actually look like that. I try to say, ‘Beauty is great; take care of yourself. But use your brains to stay in school, and try to further yourself not just on your looks. You have to believe in yourself’”, she states.
We live in a culture that doesn’t promote self-confidence, instead it narrates how one is suppose to look, talk and think. Yet, will this bring happiness? If we do not love ourselves, we will never learn to love anything. I believe that through her project, Greenfield wants everyone (especially girls) to realize that there is more to life than being beautiful. Greenfield says,
Beauty is everywhere. You can’t escape it. It’s on the billboards; it’s on the buses. So many people who live here base their lives on being beautiful. If you want to go out every night and do nothing with your life, then beauty is power. Because that’s what those people want. They suck off your beauty, like vampires. But if you want to do something real with your life and give back to the world and do something intelligent, then I don’t think beauty is power. Uniqueness is power. And creativity is power.
Beauty is ephemeral, yet embracing who one is in order to achieve great things will transcend a life time.
