viz.

Giovanni Bortolani, from the Fake Too Fake series

Using some seriously inventive (and at times disturbing) photoshop, Italian artist Giovanni Bortolani has created a series of photos about the composition of the human form.  While the image above suggests a relationship between the body and the organic by superimposing a leaf skeleton on a man's back, most of Bortolani's photos in the series explore bodies in terms of that which is "fake" or constructed.  The images in Fake Too Fake are jarring, but they ask us to consider what we're doing to our bodies in this age of plastic surgery and diet pills.  NSFW (and somewhat gruesome) material after the jump.

Giovanni Bortolani, from the Fake Too Fake series

Though Joseph Ayoub from White Zine (a website about digital arts) argues that Bortolani's images "can sometimes be too trashy," I think that many of them make interesting and complex arguments about visibility and identity.  Juxtaposing male and female, black and white, inside and outside, Bortolani questions how identity is constructed or shared.  What is the relationship between inner self and outer appearance?

While the images might be rather risque for some classrooms, it would be an interesting exercise to ask students to come up with captions for these images, or to treat them like advertisements with slogans.  The solitary, brooding model is reminiscent of the Calvin Kline underwear ads, and the arguments these images make would certainly fit the context of celebrity, body image, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.  I can imagine several of these images as strikingly effective anti-drug advertisements which wouldn't be too far off from the scare tactics of current campaigns.  Of course, that could also open up a conversation about rhetorical fallacies, but the images are unquestionably effective in terms of getting our attention.