I went to a photo store, kind of like a family Glamour Shots, in the Ennasr neighborhood of Tunis a few days ago. I needed to get a handful of passport photos to submit as part of my registration for Arabic language courses. To that end, I spent the morning and most of the afternoon downtown and then swung by the photo shop on my way home.
The photo shop is by no means, it should be said, an inconspicuous building. It has a black marble slab overhanging the entrance with its name in stylish, jagged letters. The letters are red, like many of the walls inside. 3ft x 2ft photos of previous clients decorate the pillars guarding the glass entrance doors and larger-than-life photos of clients' weddings, smiling babies, and pretty college-age women act as a backdrop to the front counter, where employees busily type away on the store's various desktop computers.
One of said employees, a young guy with jet-black, gelled hair, took me into the photo-taking room, where I sat on a black stool in front of two huge lights. Each time he took a picture, he showed it to me for my evaluation (so much better than Walgreen's!); I disliked the first five, so we kept going. On one of the pictures, wisps of hair were curling off randomnly over my headband, maybe because of the humidity; my photographer reassured me, "Once I touch it up, it will look fine!" I nodded vaguely. A touch-up? This is a professional job!
We settled on the seventh picture. He took his digital camera out to the front and began to upload the pictures. Before me were about five pictures of a woman wearing a purple hijab, smiling, unsmiling, until she had the picture she wanted. A large screen TV was on the side left wall of the shop, and while I waited I sat down and began to watch an American movie, subtitled in Arabic, on a Lebanese satellite television station.
All of the sudden the employee next to the big screen TV switched off the movie, and next I see: my gigantic face, slightly oily hair (I have spent all day in the polluted downtown, so forgive me), slightly lopsided smile, on a big screen TV in front of all bystanders. My photographer opens up the edit function and begins to retouch my passport photo, with every edit broadcast on the shop's BIG SCREEN TV. I am fascinated if still totally unprepared.
First, he lightens my photo to make me go from somewhat tan - I've been wearing sunscreen everyday but still, I've gotten quite a bit of color - to white, white, white. Now I understand how pictures of G and his kids always seem so unbelievably pale to me; I used to wonder if they purposefully used more powerful lights when taking pictures, to achieve the desired (and culturally valued) light complexion. Now I see it just a simple question of some function on photo editing software. [A function that I, as an American, have never opted to use, though I may in my day have altered a few photos to deepen colors and make my complexion more tan.]
Next, he removed all of my smile lines - I mean, all of them, so my face became completely taut and smooth. He removed a few blemishes and lightened under my eyes.
Then, he removed what I think he thought was a bra strap. I tried to explain to him that it was simply the shirt that I was wearing under the shirt he could see, but he didn't mind or perhaps understand. It was a tan piece of cloth visible on one shoulder, under my blue shirt, so he smoothed it out, trying to make it blend into my skin and hair.
Honestly, this last edit looks a bit weird - especially in the large picture he gave me to keep, in case I should ever want to make more copies of the photo. I don't think I'll be doing that - the 6x8 itself is enough of a cultural treasure.
But I did appreciate seeing how conceptions of beauty can be different - and why every one seems to look so "awesome" in their passport photos.
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