Sunday, December 31, 2017

The Beauty of Retrospect: Alison Vietor

This is photo of Alison Vietor, whom I first featured in July 2011, scanned from a cigarette ad in a magazine of from the mid-eighties.


I don't like to feature cigarette ads here, and as you might remember, I displayed photos of Beverly Johnson from cigarette ads with the offending ciggies airbrushed out; and she stopped doing such ads when she realized she was promoting lung cancer.  Ms. Vietor's gaiety and beauty compelled me to use this picture, though.  And I love her outfit - primary colors.

But I was still uncomfortable with showing the original ad, so I airbrushed and edited out everything - not just the cigarette in the Ms. Vietor's hand but also the text and the Surgeon General's warning.  Because I don't want to show cigarette ads and promote unhealthy behavior any more than Beverly Johnson wanted to do them.  Hence, any picture I show from cigarette ads is altered, so that the product is not featured.

Oh yeah, in my original post of Sheila Johnson from September 2009 (my second most popular post ever on this blog), the first picture at the top of the post shows Sheila Johnson holding a cigarette, but I didn't even notice the cigarette between her fingers until just recently.  I remember where I found the picture, but I didn't know it was originally from a cigarette ad.  Sometimes you don't notice those little details.   

I didn't realize that this was Alison Vietor when I first came across this picture; I failed to recognize her and someone had to tell me who it was.  But that only demonstrates what a great model she was.  Models are like actors in some ways, because they can assume different images and identities in their work, and that's why some models become actors (Rene Russo and Andie MacDowell are obvious examples) and why even famous actors become spokesmodels (Catherine Deneuve for Chanel, anyone?) Alison Vietor, despite her lack of name recognition, is truly a great model for making me not realize it was her. :-)

Right - Happy new year! I'll be back in 2018 with another set of new subjects - another special series.

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