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Here’s the Unretouched Pigeon From Lena Dunham’s Vogue Shoot


January 17, 2014 | Marina Galperina

The pigeon on Lena Dunham’s head and its fans, ourselves included, love it just the way it is. Vogue‘s opinion, of course, is another matter.

Within two hours of offering $10,000 for unretouched images from Annie Leibovitz’s photography session with the pigeon, we received one allegedly unaltered image. As expected, it’s great —  the pigeon on Lena Dunham’s head looks fantastic. Aside from the obvious lighting tweaks that any publication would make, the unretouched images are pretty perfect. Which makes some of the adjustments — shrinking of the rump and restructuring of the beak — seem that much more unnecessary. Why bother? These slight tweaks, the “you look great, but you’d look just a little more great if…” stuff is insidious.

(Image: ANIMALNewYork, Vogue)