New kind of beauty
I began this work in 2008, around the same time i was taking care of my 97 year old father.
In caring for my aging father, I was confronted with the ideas of death, mortality, and aging, on a daily basis. I began to think about what we do as a culture to defeat those concepts, and of course, plastic surgery came to mind. Fortuitously, I was asked by a magazine to take a portrait of a man who'd had extensive work done. When I saw him, a door opened, and all my intangible thoughts about plastic surgery and rejuvenation coalesced into an idea. However, as I started doing the work, I became much more interested in a larger idea of beauty, of what it meant, and where we are going as a race.
For stylistic inspiration I began looking at 15th and 16th century portraiture, particularly Hans Holbein the younger, and Memling. They represented an archetype of beauty of their time, and I felt that in many ways, I was representing a new archetype of beauty of our era.
I believe we are at the vanguard of a period of human-induced evolution. A turning point in history where we are beginning to define not only our own concept of beauty, but of physicality itself.
Beauty has always been a currency, and now that we finally have the technological means to mint our own, what choices do we make?
Is beauty informed by contemporary culture? By history? Or is it defined by the surgeon’s hand?
When we re-make ourselves, are we revealing our true character, or are we stripping away our very identity?
This project is intended to ask, but not answer questions.
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Biografia
Phillip Toledano was born in London to a French Moroccan mother, and an American father. He believes that photographs should be like unfinished sentences. There should always be space for questions.
Phillipfs work is socio-political, and varies in medium, from photography, to installation.
His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, The New York Times magazine, The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, Wallpaper, The London Times, The Independent Magazine, Le Monde, and Interview magazine, amongst others.
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