judicious cropping

I was looking through the magazine rack at the bookstore close to work and I saw the cover of NYMag with NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer on the front.

Whoah.



I had (and still don't) really have any idea of who he is.

So I opened it up and saw this:



...

whoah.

And then I saw this and realized the magic of a photo shoot and judicious cropping.



Which isn't to say that he's unattractive, but there be some photo magic happening in the first two.

There's something related here between judicious cropping and the the technologies of performance reproduction (speaking of, I'm curious what Adorno has to say about this. I'm still somewhat daunted by the size of his "Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction"), but I can't think of it right now without sounding tired and obvious.

Because I'm tired, obviously :P