Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 125 posts

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#111

Post by geofft »

ska wrote: post #45
GuB-42 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It there a reason why these images "no longer represent the best examples for future research"? How is Lena inferior to the other "female" images? Lena seems to offer a good mix of highly detailed textures, smooth gradients and sharp edges. Maybe there are copyright reasons but Playboy seems to be fine with the use that the Lena image is made of.

Lena is problematic for technical reasons, it’s not PC pushback. The scanning technology of the time was somewhat limited, and the exact parameters are not known if I recall correctly. And of course it is fairly low resolution by current standards. It’s a scan of a reproduction of a production image on magazine paper - something quite different than a photograph. All of these processes introduce characteristic degrad…

I wonder to what extent the Lena image has stayed around longer than technically warranted because of a desire to avoid PC pushback.

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#112

Post by eecc »

yawaramin wrote: post #101
eecc wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly I think it’s so overstated that it’s edging toward self-parody. Of course a straight male won’t ever be able to compute the monstrosity of Patriarchy - ironically, it makes me a lesser human - but seriously, I’m not sure all this vitriol helps. Believe me, I’m relieved when I see a normal woman work at software. It raises my hope that we’re not inevitability stuck living in a Mad Men episode. A normal woman,…

Do you ever think maybe that most normal women walk away when they see a culture of objectification of women, of men making up all sorts of weird analogies and excuses to keep using Playboy pictures in the workplace, and that you telling them to just 'chill' might not actually fix the problem?

Re-reading your reply I noticed you misread my comment: I never said anyone should “just chill” and comply... no. I wrote that it should be “chill for anyone to just pick up this job if they feel it’s their thing”. I’m quite sure there’s a world of difference

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#113

Post by yawaramin »

eecc wrote: post #112
yawaramin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever think maybe that most normal women walk away when they see a culture of objectification of women, of men making up all sorts of weird analogies and excuses to keep using Playboy pictures in the workplace, and that you telling them to just 'chill' might not actually fix the problem?

Re-reading your reply I noticed you misread my comment: I never said anyone should “just chill” and comply... no. I wrote that it should be “chill for anyone to just pick up this job if they feel it’s their thing”. I’m quite sure there’s a world of difference

What exactly do you think is involved in making it “chill for anyone to just pick up this job if they feel it’s their thing”? Like, should anything different be done? Should anything be done at all? Or should we tell anyone who has any criticisms, 'nah we made it chill, so your criticism is actually invalid'?

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#114

Post by Zuider »

jabberthemutt wrote: post #66
59nadir wrote: post #59

Lena Forsén* You'd think, having written a whole article about her, you'd be able to spell her name right. It's incredible to me how relaxed people in English speaking countries, particularly the US, are with removing and changing letters as they see fit. I remember seeing someone on Reddit, for example, who had named their kid Soren, after Søren Kierkegaard, completely ignoring that it's not even the same name. Do p…

I too found that irritating. Especially since the deliberate misspelling of her name as 'Lenna' in Playboy.was explicitly mentioned.

But the article explicitly states that Lena Forsén herself requested the extra 'n' in the spelling of her name so that she would not have to hear it mispronounced as 'Leena'.

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#115

Post by walterstucco »

tghw wrote: post #110
v64 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important to keep in mind that Lena Forsen (and the other models of Playboy) made the decision to be photographed nude and to have those photos published as a creative expression. To portray the exhibition as exploitative robs them of their agency and demeans their decision.

The issue isn't her agency in choosing to model or not. The issue is that casually having a Playboy around work is in and of itself exclusionary. It taints the history of graphics research because it is so clearly inappropriate, and only in a very broken work culture would it be remotely okay to have that sort of stuff just laying around.

Is it?

Is having vanity fair around exclusionary then?

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#116

Post by [deleted] »

xanipher wrote: post #74
BurningCycles wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when my two sisters were plastering their walls with very good looking males to which they masturbated, it was making it harder for me as a male to be percieved as being equal ? Or the fanservice aimed at females in current-day shows like Riverdale where these hot guys throw off their shirts at the hint of an opportunity ? This idea that it is somehow wrong to appreciate and find pleasure in the physical appearanc…

This is not about personal "pleasure in the physical appearance", but about the culture where using Playboy photos in a professional cobtext doesn't raise any eyebrows.

[deleted]

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#117

Post by brokenmachine »

underwater wrote: post #19
iamleppert wrote: post #12

What’s wrong with female beauty? It’s not like it’s porn or a nude image. I’m not even a straight male but I can still appreciate female beauty and I don’t think it’s sexist. The photo is more artistic than anything. I wonder if the same people who complain about this photo lodge similar complaints when they visit art museums that have female nudity in oil paintings or nude female sculptures? I know nudity and even a…

Because it makes a significant portion of the population feel objectified? This is literally what happened to "Lenna" - the image didn't celebrate or honour her as a person. It was an image protraying an unrealistic "beautiful thing". People didn't even know her real name, or what she's achieved as a real person. It's perfectly reasonable and rational for women to say this makes it harder for them to be perceived as…

>It was an image protraying an unrealistic "beautiful thing".

Unrealistic?

It's a picture of a woman. What's unrealistic about that? That she's good looking?

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#118

Post by brokenmachine »

qubex wrote: post #57
jordigh wrote: post #38

I feel that whenever Lena is mentioned, we should also give a shoutout to the researchers who were fed up with her and decided to use Fabio instead. https://arxiv.org/abs/1202.6429 What do you guys (yes, guys) think about making Fabio the standard image instead?

Well on her (the researcher), her (Lena), and him (Fabio). Well on all of them.

You mean "good on them"?

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#119

Post by eecc »

yawaramin wrote: post #113
eecc wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re-reading your reply I noticed you misread my comment: I never said anyone should “just chill” and comply... no. I wrote that it should be “chill for anyone to just pick up this job if they feel it’s their thing”. I’m quite sure there’s a world of difference

What exactly do you think is involved in making it “chill for anyone to just pick up this job if they feel it’s their thing”? Like, should anything different be done? Should anything be done at all? Or should we tell anyone who has any criticisms, 'nah we made it chill, so your criticism is actually invalid'?

IMHO any action should not be centered around combing history to formulate a constant moral (istic) judgement on past behavior.

Sure, the most egregious cases of outspoken chauvinism should be addresses - preferably if they relate to something occurring today - but constant nitpick and blanket attack simply select for people with axes to grind who are motivated to quarrel.

Propositive criticisms like "this attitude/prejudice/whatever, today is an obstacle now and we should work to remove it if we care about an inclusive society also in our industry and workplace." would be much more effective (IMHO.)

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#120

Post by afiori »

IshKebab wrote: post #71
ska wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lena is problematic for technical reasons, it’s not PC pushback. The scanning technology of the time was somewhat limited, and the exact parameters are not known if I recall correctly. And of course it is fairly low resolution by current standards. It’s a scan of a reproduction of a production image on magazine paper - something quite different than a photograph. All of these processes introduce characteristic degrad…

There are plenty of other even lower resolution images in the set that they haven't removed.

Low resolution was not part of the motivations presented. The main one, IMO, were that it is highly processed and that there were a few slightly different copies going around making ambiguous which one did people actually use.

Also I would personally add that the level of exposure received could by itself warrant removal from a bigger set, since it would still be used as an example anyway and could skew informal perception.

Post reply on HN