The last Time magazine cover, which features beleaguered basketball player Brittney Griner, was mocked for being a work of “High School Photoshop.”
The front page shows an image of Griner, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) star who was arrested in Russia for drug trafficking, who Time commissioned photographer and multimedia artist Lorna Simpson to create.
A viral Facebook post from Old fashioned sports intended Time cover, writes: “Bruh, Time just dropped some high school Photoshop on the cover of their magazine.
The Facebook page highlighted the rough cutout technique by drawing circles around the parts of the photograph that have been altered. Griner’s hair still has the background of the original image clearly visible, even though it sticks out to one side, making the shape of his head look odd.
The image contains Griner’s shoulders as well as his head, but the shoulders have strayed abnormally away from the skull and the neck is awkwardly cut out with harsh lines.
“Wow! Enthusiast! At the very least, the Smudge tool would have been an improvement,” wrote Marco Lagana.
However, Simpson is known for this technique. Using obviously cut out selections and pasting them over other images, in a magazine collage style.
“If someone actually read the article, they would know that the work was intentional,” says Johnny Prescott.
Griner’s portrait was taken by photographer Stephen Gosling and is just a standard portrait of the basketball star in his WNBA uniform. Time says that “Simpson created an image that reinvented a standard media portrait”.
“The collage centers Griner’s unwavering gaze, but with his uniform replaced by a celestial overlay of meteor showers – taken from a 19th-century engraving – stretching into the background,” writes Cady Lang for Time.
Controversy surrounding the case
While a few commenters noticed Simpson’s unusual Photoshop approach, most people are furious with the basketball star’s case. Many people blame Griner for breaking the law of another country.
A Russian court today found her guilty of smuggling 0.702 grams of cannabis oil into the country and sentenced her to nine and a half years.
Griner addressed the judge today, saying she ‘never meant to break any law’. She says vape cartridges containing cannabis oil were mistakenly packaged.
The sentencing should be a formality, the length of his detention depending on negotiations for a prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia.
Picture credits: Header photo courtesy of Time magazine.