Love Me explores the insidious power of the global beauty industry and our collective insecurity, vanity and fear of ageing. Over a period of five years Zed Nelson visited eighteen countries across five continents, photographing cosmetic surgeons, beauty queens, soldiers and bodybuilders alongside everyday teenagers, housewives and businessmen.
Love Me reflects on both the cultural and commercial forces that drive a global obsession with youth and beauty. The project explores how a new form of globalization is taking place, where an increasingly narrow Western beauty ideal is being exported around the world like a crude universal brand. In a series of compelling images, Love Me negotiates the boundaries of art and documentary, reflecting a world we have created in which there are enormous social, psychological and economic rewards and penalties attached to the way we look.
Love Me represent a powerful body of work that forces every one of us to question our own place in a culture that compels us to constantly judge, and be judged, by our appearance.
