First, a definition: designer baby: “a baby whose genetic makeup has been selected in order to eradicate a particular defect, or to ensure that a particular gene is present.”
This project is fairly hypothetical; it is futuristic and speculative; at least to me, it feels plastic, and quite uncomfortable. The concept of genetically altering an embryo for cosmetic purposes unsettles me, and while I myself can identify a few things I would not mind to have changed about myself, I find it disturbing, and a little sad, that we’ve reached a point in our struggle towards perfectionism that we may even choose to give our children the perfect eyes, perfect hair, perfect, well, anything genetic before we even get the chance to know and love what isn’t perfect about them.
Partially for my growth as an artist and a person and partially because of the relatively easy access, I used some of the people I am close to as subjects of my images. I took these people I’ve grown to know and love and changed them; I made them ‘designer.’ Each image is only one half of each individual’s face, but mirrored, making him or her completely symmetrical. Their physical characteristics are listed below, as well as one ‘alteration failure,’ that is one thing they wish they could change about themselves.
