EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — In the early 1990s, Glamour Shots photography studios were booming with business.

At its peak, there were over 350 studios across the United States. Fast forward to 2023, and only two studios remain. One of them is located in East El Paso, and the other is in New Jersey.

Glamour Shots was known for transforming people into models, providing unique makeup and hairstyles, followed by a glamorous photo session.

With changing fashion trends and advanced technology, hundreds of locations were forced to close their doors, but the El Paso location is still booming with business.

The store owner, Leonora Campbell, told ABC-7 she takes tens of thousands of pictures each year, and customers continue to return.

ABC-7’s Rosemary Montañez and photojournalist Jerry Najera dive deep into the Glamour Shots world to uncover the secret to success for the El Paso photography studio.

And they introduce you to the woman who won’t stop until it’s picture perfect.

You can scroll through a slide show of the Glamour Shots photos sent in by ABC-7 viewers here.

‘Picture Perfect’ airs Wednesday, May 24th on ABC-7 at 10.

A new exhibition at the State Library of Victoria showcases images from the library’s extensive photography collection, alongside new commissions, to provide a unique perspective on Victoria’s social history.

MIRROR: New views on photography, which is open now, features 141 photos by some of Victoria’s most renowned photographers including Destiny Deacon, Maggie Diaz, Rennie Ellis, The Huxleys, Alan Jordan, Viva Gibb, Julie Millowick, Wolfgang Sievers and Mark Strizic. 

The photographs span 80 years, and according to the Library, offer moments of reflection on Victoria’s social history through compelling images of people and place.

Connected by the theme of ‘Mirror’, the images have been handpicked by State Library Victoria Curators, Jade Hadfield, Kate Rhodes and Linda Short. 

In addition, new commissions by five individual respondents and two collectives of well-known and emerging poets, playwrights, storytellers and authors including Alice Skye, Jason Tamiru and Prithvi Varatharajan, further tap into that theme, with new perspectives on the photographs presented through text, poetry, song and performance. 

These commissions have been woven into three impressive large-scale projections. Additionally, two small ‘cinemas’ within the galleries display the full set of 141 photographs in a digital take on the traditional Library catalogue. 

“Mirror not only offers an insight into Victorian life through the lenses of some brilliant photographers,” said State Library Victoria CEO Paul Duldig, “but it also provides fresh perspectives of the library’s rich holdings of photography through the talents of some brilliant novelists, poets, performers and activists.”

Mirror: New views on photography is on at the State Library Victoria until January 28, 2024. You can find out more about the exhibition here. 

Brigitte Lacombe has mastered the art of the celebrity portrait. The New York-based French photographer has shot everyone from Patti Smith to Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep, and all with an effortless click of the shutter.

Lacombe sees her portraits as the result of her friendships with her subjects—she “lets them be themselves,” as she puts it. The photographer, who has been based in New York City since the early 1980s, has a small photo studio in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where she shoots intimate portraits of stars.

Her work was recently on view in a group show called Face to Face: Portraits of Artists by Tacita Dean, Brigitte Lacombe and Catherine Opie at the International Center of Photography in New York. It showcased some of her best black-and-white portraits—thoughtful shots of New York icons like Joan Didion and Fran Lebowitz. It also showcased her work as a film-set photographer, as she has worked on Martin Scorsese film sets for over 25 years, from The Wolf of Wall Street to The Departed, and more.

The photographer has had museum exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, and her photo book oeuvre includes Lacombe Cinema/Theater, from 2001, a portrait book of celebrities, including shots of Leonardo DiCaprio, John Malkovich, and Diane Keaton. A documentary about Lacombe’s life and work was released in 2019, called Brigitte, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. 

Lacombe speaks about her early days as a press photographer, shooting the stars, and the first time she visited Hollywood.  

Penta: How did you arrive in the U.S., after living in Paris?

Brigitte Lacombe: I was living and working in Paris, working for magazines at the beginning of my career. I met Dustin Hoffman at the Cannes Film Festival and photographed him there. He invited me to come and shoot on the set of his next movie, which was All the President’s Men. They were shooting in Washington, D.C. I was on the set, and they were going to Los Angeles to shoot in a studio. My mentor had a family there, so I stayed with them. It was my first time in California. That was 1975. I stayed for three months and got to know the film scene. I met Steven Spielberg and Brian de Palma. Everyone knew each other in Hollywood. 

Was this the first time you shot on film sets, correct? What a peculiar job, very behind-the-scenes.

Yes. You’re not documenting from the point of view of the film camera. Set photography is different. I would be invited by a filmmaker or an actor or the film studios and develop the relationship. With director Martin Scorsese, it became a real friendship, and I have been working on his projects for 25 years. I would visit his sets several times for specific scenes. I’m almost part of the team with his films, even though I’m not. I’m welcome at the invitation of the director.

You also do portraiture, and you’ve shot a lot of your friends. Have there been any highlights of your career?

I love what I do, and I shoot every day. I love the reportage part because there’s diversity. You don’t have any control in the situation: You come in, and you adapt yourself to that situation. You find your way within that, as opposed to portrait photography. As I do portraiture, I control everything from the location to the light to the mood, and the music, and who is in the room. I start shooting and it becomes a collaboration with the person I’m photographing.

Was it hard breaking into photography as a woman in the 1970s?

For me, it might have been an advantage. I was one of the first women photographers around. I stood out. I was also extremely lucky in the first important meetings I had. I was open to jumping on location. I came to the U.S. to work on a movie set where I didn’t know anyone. I jumped at the opportunity. I’m still like that. I’m ready and open to some new offers. A job, a place to go, whatever. It’s a combination of being a woman and being ready for any experience, in a way. That’s my life.

You’ve shot public figures like Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Marc Jacobs, and Margaret Atwood. What is the essence of a good portrait?

I let people be themselves. That’s the essence of a good portrait. People I have photographed are all extraordinary people. One of the most extraordinary I’ve ever shot is
Nelson Mandela.
Meryl, who I first shot 35 years ago, became a friend. Every person is different, that’s part of the attraction to me. That’s how I can keep doing it. It’s not repetitive. Each portrait is a new person. I seek out my subjects myself because I’m interested in them and their work. I’m meeting people I’m interested in.

Where is your studio in New York City and what makes it special?

I have a studio I use for portraits when people come by themselves. It’s in the Lower East Side in downtown Manhattan. It’s in a historic building and it’s a north-facing studio with classic light. It’s not for a big shoot. It’s a small place with great light. It’s basically shoots for no specific purpose but I want to do a portrait of them. I invite them. It’s not where someone comes with a stylist, hair, and makeup, and all that. It’s a sitting portrait in a studio. But when I do big shoots, I rent a bigger studio. But I make a mock studio everywhere I go in the world—whether it’s a corner in a museum or anywhere in the world, I’m doing portraits. It’s easier in my studio, than anywhere else. 

What’s your favorite arrondissement in Paris?

I love Paris. I have a place in the seventh arrondissement in the left bank of Paris. So, I know that area best. I go back very often. I love the beauty of the city, its history. It’s a different scale than New York. I have traveled all my life, I travel nine months out of the year. For Paris, it’s my place. No matter how long I have been away, Paris is my place. It’s a place I love to come back to.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If you look through the galleries here at Fstoppers, trending images on social media, or those on the pages of magazines, they usually depict beauty. Beauty is easy to like and is, understandably, popular. But there is something far harder to capture that is sublime.

Thinking back to my youth, I remember a girlfriend of mine decrying that the actors in TV programs were all good-looking. She was right. Characters had symmetrical features, their bodies were shapely, and they had winning smiles revealing perfectly set teeth. I was an awkward teenager and never great at quick compliments. Consequently, there was too long a pause before I told her that she could be an actress. She came back and said I had a good face for the radio and then added that didn’t have the voice for it. She was right, of course. But that was the end of my dreams of being a movie star or a radio DJ, and it heralded the end of that teenage romance.

Things haven’t changed much on TV or in the movies. Those industries are still dominated by beautiful women and ruggedly handsome men. They, of course, have talent too. Modern audiences are more discerning than film studios give them credit for, and wooden performances can still make a production flop.

The same applies to photography. Our audiences often seek out beauty in our photographs. Whatever genre you shoot, your photos will have popular appeal if they have an element of beauty. However, just like poor-quality acting by a handsome hunk can ruin a film, beauty alone in a photo isn’t enough. A photo must be well executed, because a poorly conceived image, no matter how beautiful the subject, won’t be compelling.

Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder?

Beauty is a difficult thing to describe. Despite it being said it is in the eye of the beholder, most people appreciate the same beautiful things. Who doesn’t love a glorious sunrise, a perfectly formed rose, or moonlight reflected off the sea, Brad Pitt, or Halle Berry?

Unsurprisingly, that appreciation of beauty can be skewed by fear and learned prejudices. I knew a man who was terrified of butterflies and birds – quite a handicap, as he was a gardener – and the most ignorant won’t see beauty but get hung up on people’s skin color. But those exceptions aside, an understanding of what is beautiful is universal. Consequently, beautiful photos are easy to like.

Soft Focus and the Slow Death of Natural Beauty

I joke with my wife that the deterioration of our eyes with age is an evolutionary adaptation. As we get older, we look at each other through soft-focus lenses that hide the wrinkles and blemishes brought on through time and the interesting and adventurous lives we’ve led so far.

Soft focus is a technique of old that photographers and filmmakers employ to supposedly enhance beauty. Look at older movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood up until the late 1990s and you will see the filter applied to, especially, women actors. Check the following trailer for the film Casablanca and note the increasing softness when Ingrid Bergman is in the frame.

Over time, models were airbrushed and then “Photoshopped” to give them supposedly perfect complexions. Now, Instagram applies automated filters that supposedly make people more beautiful. It’s now widely recognized that this idealization of what the human skin should look like to be beautiful is hugely damaging.

Cultural norms, these days driven by commercialization, try to dictate what is beautiful. Western ideals have led those standards globally. However, when I lived in Africa, the advertising posters for soft drinks featured far healthier-looking people than the stick figures you would see in their ads here in the West. It is a fake belief that is being peddled. In reality, the result of guzzling these chemical-filled acidic drinks just leads to obesity, heart disease, and rotten teeth.

Thanks to digital manipulation, what was considered by society to be beautiful has become inaccessible. Men’s chiseled features and most desirable female body shapes can often only be achieved through supposed enhancements on a computer. Photographs of people become harmful lies that destroy the esteem of those whose bodies don’t comply with an impossible set of rules. Thankfully, this imitation of beauty is being exposed as false and the idea that it is okay not to fit with it is more widely accepted. Still, it’s a brave portrait or boudoir photographer who will show their subjects, warts and all.

What Ever Happened to the Beautiful Things?

There was a period in history when human-made products were made to be beautiful. Ming Dynasty vases, sailing ships, furniture, clocks, printing presses, book covers, steam trains, and even cameras were things of beauty. I’ve long believed that creative people should surround themselves with items of beauty. The Industrial Revolution brought forward huge leaps in technology, but the designs were always aesthetically pleasing.

Yet, with the digital age, most cameras became solely utilitarian, bland lumps of plastic. Let’s face it, the mass-produced cameras from the biggest brands – Nikon, Sony, and Canon – are boring and uninspiring to look at. There have always been exceptions, especially from the smaller brands, such as Fujifilm and OM, that manage to produce great-looking gear. Happily, last year Nikon brought out a better-looking camera with the Z fc. Those big camera manufacturers should take a leaf out of the smaller brands’ books and create technology that looks great on top of being functional.

After all, other functional creative products that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars look fabulous. Montblanc fountain pens, Apple MacBooks, Da Vinci paint brush sets, and Aga Range cookers all look beautiful and therefore inspirational. But most cameras from the biggest brands are shapeless, characterless blobs.

That may seem controversial, as beauty seems to fly in the face of the utilitarian design ideals of Bauhaus that suggested form follows function. But, if inspiration through beauty is seen as a function because it can inspire, then beauty becomes an important factor of design too.

Life Beyond Beauty Is Sublime

On the other hand, it doesn’t follow that the only thing we are attracted to is beauty. Sometimes, we photograph things that are awe-inspiring and not necessarily beautiful. In the aesthetics branch of philosophy, this is the sublime. Sublime is the quality of greatness beyond all measure. It is not limited to artistic, physical, and aesthetic greatness, but it can refer to moral, intellectual, and metaphysical greatness too.

If you have ever walked in a mountainous landscape, heard a lion road in the wide-open savannahs of Africa, or listened to and been moved by a speech by a great orator, that is sublime. The essayist, poet, and playwright Joseph Addison summed it up when he said of the Alps that they “filled the mind with an agreeable kind of horror.”

The Philosopher Edmund Burke argued that sublimity and beauty were mutually exclusive.

Emmanual Kant said that the sublime could not be held in an object. A raging sea, a thunderstorm, and the night sky are not sublime themselves. However, the apprehension we experience when we observe those things is what makes them sublime. Kant considered this as a priori knowledge: something universally valid but independent of previous experience.

So, if you stood in front of an awe-inspiring landscape, or within a thunderstorm, or were staring up at the stars, or watching a raging sea, or saw a bird diving into the sea for fish, if you were in front of an orchestra playing a Beethoven symphony, or moved by a long-experienced actor reciting a Shakespearean sonnet, that response you feel to that incomprehensible power over which you had no control is sublime.

Just like when confronted with beauty, meeting the sublime brings about physical reactions: pupils dilate, heartbeat quickens, hair stands on end, and shivers run down the spine.

The works of Ansel Adams can be considered sublime because one can be filled with awe by the staggering landscapes of Yosemite. His careful compositions and precise exposures were designed to show the power of the American landscape.

 Horrifying images of warfare, oppression, and destitution; portraits of charismatic people both good and evil; the photos of the R101 airship exploding; the images of the detonations of atomic bombs on the Bikini Atoll; small figures dwarfed by the landscape around them; and deep space images showing countless galaxies each comprising billions of stars are examples of photos that could be considered sublime.

Creating sublime images is so much harder to capture in a photograph than beauty. Furthermore, it is becoming ever more difficult still because of the sheer number of photos that are taken every year, and some photos that would have awed us are now commonplace. Overexposure to subject matter reduces the impact and we become numb to what should fill us with wonderment.

Moreover, sublimity is something we lose when we display photographs on a phone screen. How can we be in awe of a picture that is a two-inch square?

The difference between beauty and sublime can be quite hard to grasp. This is only the briefest of introductions to the concept, and there are plenty of resources online to read up on the topic.  

Do you pursue beauty or sublime in your photography? Is it something you had not considered before? It will be great to hear your thoughts in the comments about this topic.