Anne Ackermann

documentary photographer & photojournalist
 
Plastica
Location: Speyer
Nationality: Germany
Biography: Anne Ackermann is a documentary photographer based in Germany working worldwide. Her work often focuses on women’s and contemporary issues, touching themes ranging from migration and aftermath to skin bleaching and plastic surgery, from... MORE
Public Story
Plastica
Copyright Anne Ackermann 2024
Updated Jan 2019
Topics Brasil, Conceptual, Editorial, Fashion, Fine Art, Latin america, Nude, Photography, Portraiture, Women

Plástica, Rio de Janeiro, 2009

I have produced my portraits of women who received plastic surgery (known in Brazil as “plástica”) in Rio de Janeiro. It was important to me to show how medical enhancement has arrived in a developing country with serious problems, such as violence, inequality and an underfunded public health system. Since the nineties credit plans have made plastic surgery more accessible in the private sector, while public hospitals offer free or discounted cosmetic operations to what surgeons refer to as the povão, or “common people.”

The women in the pictures are “normal” women. Most work at low income jobs such as housemaid, waitress or telephone operator. During interviews with them, I learned that for them physical beauty has become a force to improve their lives, to raise “self-esteem,” and to gain power, control and social and economic success.

For me as a photographer it was important to show the women in an intimate situation and their post-operative bodies. Plastic surgery is a violent intervention and I preferred to show it as it is. Yet I aimed to capture the hope for a better life and the mix of vulnerability and confidence these women expressed after having surgery. Here lies the real beauty of these women to me.

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