Retoucher Pascal Dangin Clarifies His Relationship With Dove

Yesterday Claire wrote about the New Yorker profile of Pascal Dangin, in which he is quoted as saying he worked on the Dove ads that feature women in their underwear. In fact, Dangin was not hired by Dove, but by Annie Leibovitz--the photographer who shot the photos of women in the Dove ProAge campaign.

"The 'real women' ad referenced in recent media coverage was created and produced entirely by Ogilvy, the Dove brand’s advertising agency, from start to finish and the women’s bodies were not digitally altered," according to a statement released by Dove today.

"Let's be perfectly clear - Pascal does all kinds of work - but he is primarily a printer - and only does retouching when asked to. The idea for Dove was very clear at the beginning. There was to be NO retouching and there was not," Leibovitz said in the statement.

Mr. Dangin responded, “The recent article published by The New Yorker incorrectly implies that I retouched the images in connection with the Dove 'real women' ad. I only worked on the Dove ProAge campaign taken by Annie Leibovitz and was directed only to remove dust and do color correction – both the integrity of the photographs and the women’s natural beauty were maintained.”