Maybe the cigarettes were removed because people in general have a negative reaction to seeing smoking, more so now than decades ago when the photographs were taken.

When you’re creating an image (or a sculpture, or a story), authenticity should be balanced against artistic license when engineering the product that’s most likely to evoke the kind of reaction you want. It’s almost like translation: You don’t just dump some literal and raw content into a new context, you tweak it to take the new context into effect so that in the end it has about the same impact that it did in the original context.

If you want to create an image of someone, an image that people will react positively to, then it’s not necessarily unreasonable to do things like lighten up the bags under their eyes, remove extra-messy hairs or shirt wrinkles, maybe even make the neck and waist a little thinner and the jaw a little stronger, etc. Sure, it’s non-trivial (and sometimes impossible) to make images that are tweaked this way look natural, but again, being accurate might not trump the other objectives of generating the image, and that’s fine. Whenever you create something, there are wrestling objectives that you have to compromise.

When I see someone smoking (in the spaces I have access to, i.e. not in the privacy of their homes) I think “What an asshole”. Smoking is so stupid and inconsiderate and selfish and rude, it immediately lowers my image of a person when I find out they smoke. Now, “smokers are assholes” is far more true now than it was before, say, 1990 or thereabouts, so I know that I can’t be harshly judgmental this way to smokers from history… but the urge to judge is still there. I appreciate the people who edited these images and spared me the need to fight the part of my brain that says “This person is smoking; They must be an inconsiderate asshole”.

In my living room I have a collage of old pictures of my parents. One of them showed my mom holding a cigarette, and I photoshopped it out. What can I say, I think it made her look like an inconsiderate jerk, and I thought I would try to spare her memory of such judgment. There’s more to life than accuracy.

What a specious argument.

The tiny canvas of a postage stamp only allows so much. To devote a millimeter to a cigarette is a silly waste of space.

The R. Crumb illustration is wonderful, and perfectly captures – and exaggerates *just so* – the essence of what made the original photo iconic in the first place, which is the guy’s character.

I look foward with interest to twenty or so years in the future, when the next generation of dead artists is likely to be commemorated on stamps, as to whether similar complaints will be made about depictions of stars of the `sixties and `seventies if they fail to show those people popping pills, snorting coke or shooting up, or whatever their own personal addictions happened to be.

When you see any formal portrait of Walt Disney holding a pencil, that’s a pencil airbrushed over a cigarette.

So you’re saying the massive lung tumor that killed him wasn’t caused by graphite poisoning?

If this were Vogue i’d point an laugh. This is removing someone’s “faults” so they can be more admired – when the same editorial choice could me made by using a different photo.

This is more like, instead of George Lucas making the widely questioned choice to edit unpopular and contentious rifles out of E.T. – the government doing it. It’s Lucas’ prerogative. It is not the governments prerogative.

I assume that neither the subjects nor the original photographers would agree to these sanitized versions. Pretty darned sure of that in the case of Pollock.

All that has, I think, strong intuitive force. Now, WHY is it so important to not bluntly edit iconic photos? What is wrong with doing so (if anything)? That is harder to explain. I think one reason is that iconic photos (iconic anything, really) are important nodes in our collective memory. Shared reference points that we can secure conversations and thoughts about history to. That is a fragile yet important thing.

If you don’t like your iconic image of choice, find another one, don’t literally photoshop history to suit today’s agenda. It’s like pretending Jefferson didn’t sleep with his slaves, or Nixon didn;t use racial slurs. Ugly truths, in todays light, but truths nonetheless.

Kind of like airbrushing a cocktail out of Ernest Hemingway’s hands.

Especially since they used iconic images. Especially, in the case of Johnson, where the cigarette is a major focus of the picture.

“I look foward with interest to twenty or so years in the future, when the next generation of dead artists is likely to be commemorated on stamps, as to whether similar complaints will be made about depictions of stars of the `sixties and `seventies if they fail to show those people popping pills, snorting coke or shooting up, or whatever their own personal addictions happened to be.”

Well if they use an iconic image of the drug, yeah. For instanced if they decide to use the famous image of Sid Vicious shooting up heroin, but take out the needle so it looks like he’s just scratching his arm in a weird way… yeah.

One would wonder why they didn’t just…. you know… use another image.

He did miss the boat (so to speak) in that story where the Titanic was concerned, not even guessing she was broken in half.

Still a very good story, and the place I got my first exposure to the Mandelbrot Set.

Or do you prefer accurately drawn boats?

idiot.

If you want to create an image of someone, an image that people will react positively to, then it’s not necessarily unreasonable to do things like lighten up the bags under their eyes, remove extra-messy hairs or shirt wrinkles, maybe even make the neck and waist a little thinner and the jaw a little stronger, etc.

Like the skin whiter.

You answer your own question.

It’s the intent behind the image that makes it art … technically speaking. However you could also argue that a simple ‘image’ created by an elephant is still art. Either definition supports it.

How do you define art? Something nice to look at? Cause plenty of people like looking at abstract pieces.

I think what you’re actually insinuating is that things you don’t like aren’t art.