Photography and the body: Who decides what Is beautiful today
We live in an era of visual saturation. Every day, millions of images pass through our screens, our conversations, and even our emotions. The body—alive, imperfect, diverse—has become a stage where one of the most subtle yet powerful battles of our time is fought: the struggle to decide what is beautiful and who has the right to be considered so.
Photography, since its origins, has not only captured this idea—it has shaped it. Every frame, every face, and every gesture has contributed to defining the boundaries of what is desirable, visible, and acceptable.
Today, in the 21st century, it’s worth pausing to look more closely: Who decides what is beautiful? The camera, the photographer, the algorithm, or the collective gaze that validates an image with a click?
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. The eye that dictates beauty
From the daguerreotype to Instagram, photography has served as both a mirror and a laboratory of beauty. When the photographic portrait emerged in the 19th century, it not only replaced the canvas—it democratized access to representation. Yet this democratization was partial. The upper classes, white faces, and “cultivated” bodies still dominated the space of the visible.
Throughout the 20th century, photography solidified its cultural power. Magazine covers, fashion campaigns, and advertising turned the image into a tool of social aspiration: beauty became associated with youth, slimness, and conformity. The photographer’s eye, with its technique and symbolic authority, determined what was deemed desirable.
And yet, within that same history, there were always photographers who disobeyed: Diane Arbus capturing bodies outside the canon, Nan Goldin revealing the intimacy and rawness of desire, Peter Lindbergh bringing a natural, unpretentious beauty back to fashion. Each of them, in their own way, challenged the eye that dictates what is considered beautiful.
2. A brief visual history of beauty
Beauty has never been a fixed concept; it has shifted with history, politics, and technology. In the Renaissance, proportion was synonymous with perfection. During the Enlightenment, pale skin and restrained bodies signified virtue and status. In the 20th century, industrial photography and advertising transformed beauty into a commodity.
With the arrival of cinema and television, the ideal body became mobile, measurable, and global. Hollywood faces, 1990s supermodels, perfume campaigns—all conformed to an ideal that claimed universality. Yet every era also had its disruptions: punk fashion, documentary photography, and the body art of the 2000s, which showcased tattooed, scarred, and transformed bodies.
Today, we are witnessing a new era: liquid, mutable, and expansive beauty, where every user can be creator, model, and audience simultaneously. Yet even this apparent freedom is mediated by invisible systems that determine which images reach the most eyes.
3. The power of the gaze: who looks and who is looked at
Every photograph is a relationship of power. There is an eye that looks, and a body that allows itself to be looked at—or is looked at without having a choice. John Berger, the British writer and art critic, explained it brilliantly:
"The way we look is conditioned by what we know and believe."
For decades, the photographic gaze was predominantly male, white, and Western. The female body, in particular, was represented as an object of desire; the male body, as a symbol of strength or control. Yet behind every click lay a set of conventions: the light that caresses or conceals, the angle that emphasizes or erases, the silence that suggests.
Today, social media seems to democratize the gaze: everyone can photograph themselves. Yet a new pressure has emerged—the pressure of self-editing, of algorithms that favor certain types of faces or poses. The contemporary self-portrait, far from being entirely free, often conforms to the approval codes of the digital audience.
Looking consciously has become, now more than ever, a political act.
4. The algorithms of desire: programmed beauty
In the digital age, beauty is no longer decided solely by photographers—it is shaped by algorithms. Platforms analyze millions of interactions and learn which types of faces, bodies, or colors capture the most attention. The result is a statistical ideal: beauty programmed by the logic of engagement.
Filters that smooth skin, refine facial features, or enlarge eyes. Apps that offer “enhanced” versions of oneself. Artificial intelligences that generate unreal models with perfect bodies and soulless expressions. All of this builds a hyperrealistic, standardized, and dehumanized aesthetic.
AI doesn’t just interpret beauty—it produces it. And in doing so, it introduces a new form of symbolic control: it’s no longer about who takes the photo, but who designs the algorithm that decides which image will gain visibility.
The contemporary challenge lies in reclaiming human sensitivity within the automated flow. Against the unreachable brilliance of the pixel, a wrinkle, a shadow, or an imperfect gaze becomes a gesture of authenticity.
5. Resistance: new perspectives on the body
Despite this visual homogenization, projects and artists emerge every day advocating for different ways of seeing. Photographers who capture non-normative bodies, campaigns that celebrate diversity in age, skin tones, genders, and abilities. Movements like body positivity, body neutrality, and feminist documentary photography are challenging the old codes of desire. If you want an example of how brands apply this, we recommend reading Así se piensa una campaña: Una guía crítica del proceso creativo, which examines Dove as a case study.
In Latin America, photographers like Laia Abril and Yvonne Venegas have explored identity and the body from critical perspectives; in Africa and Asia, emerging creators are redefining beauty through local traditions and unique aesthetics. The internet, despite its contradictions, has also become a tool for visibility: new bodies, new narratives, new voices.
This visual resistance does not aim to replace one canon with another, but to multiply mirrors. To show that beauty can be multiple, changing, and subjective. That the body does not need permission to be seen as worthy.
6. The photographer’s role today
In this landscape, the contemporary photographer is more than just an image creator: they are a cultural agent, a storyteller of sensibilities, and a mediator between technology and humanity.
Their role is no longer only about mastering light or composition, but about understanding the ethics of the gaze. Every photograph involves a decision: what to show, how to show it, and with what intention.
Do we reproduce stereotypes, or do we challenge them? Do we look with empathy, or with power?
The photographer can choose to be part of the noise—or part of the change. They can use the camera to perpetuate an unattainable ideal, or to create a space of recognition and respect for all bodies. Technique matters, yes—but today more than ever, it matters from where we look.
Photography, at its best, does not merely capture beauty: it redefines it.
Epilogue: looking again
Perhaps the question isn’t who decides what is beautiful, but what kind of gaze we want to build together. Beauty, freed from dogma, can once again be a language of empathy—a way for diverse bodies to meet. Every photograph can be an opportunity to remember that seeing is also caring, and that the true power of an image lies not in imposing a form, but in opening a dialogue.
In an age of omnipresent cameras and algorithms that classify desire, the human gaze—slow, conscious, and sensitive—becomes an act of resistance. Because beauty, when it is free, is no longer dictated: it is discovered.
And you, what do you think?
We would love to hear your perspective. Do you believe photography can help change the way we understand beauty? Leave your comment below.
If you want to see how we approach image and gaze in our projects, we invite you to visit our website: FotoProStudio
Your gaze is also part of this conversation.
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