You know that Photoshop is used to manipulate images of women but I didn’t know that was what was going on with the very first photo it edited. Why are we not surprised?
There is more to it than you think, if less than you’d hope, but first, here’s the image:
It’s called Jennifer in Paradise and was taken on film by John Knoll, one of the people behind Photoshop. I can’t find out what this Jennifer’s surname was at the time of the shot but she married the photoshop guy and is now reportedly Jennifer Knoll.
So they married, that happened, and somehow this one shot has become known as the first-ever Photoshopped image. No more than I can find her maiden name, I can’t prove what exactly was Photoshopped here. But I think the answer is nothing. This is, I believe, the original film shot and what has happened is that myriad people have subsequently edited it to produce whatever it is their heart desired.
Only, one fella has got seriously into this shot:
[Dutch artist Constant] Dullaart’s reverence for the picture may be extreme, but it is hard to overstate Photoshop’s importance. David Hockney, who was invited to test the program soon after its release, predicted that it would spell the end of film photography. And although, as Knoll is quick to point out, photos were being altered long ago in Soviet Russia, it was only Photoshop that democratised that ability. In a way Jennifer was the last person to sit on solid ground, gazing out into an infinitely fluid sea of zeros and ones, the last woman to inhabit a world where the camera never lied.
There’s a lot more detail of Dullaart’s campaign to celebrate the shot in The Guardian’s whole story..