The photo whisperer...making images better one pixel at a time

From a four-storey headquarters with 80 employees in the New York meatpacking district, Pascal Dangin and his company Box Studios works his magic, as one of the world's leading touch-up artists. A profile in the New Yorker goes somewhat over the top in its metaphors and description, but there is no question that Dangin is responsible for the excellence (and fantasy) of what we see on the pages of the likes of Vanity Fair and Vogue. He says his work is an honest extension of hair (he started out as a shampoo boy in Paris) and makeup and wardrobe -- all used to improve the model's looks and show off the clothes to their best advantage.

As renowned as Dangin is in fashion and photographic circles, his work, with its whiff of black magic, is not often discussed outside of them. (He is not, for instance, credited in magazines.) His hold on the business derives from the pervasive belief that he possesses some ineffable, savantlike sympathy for the soul of a picture, along with the vision (and maybe the ego) of its creator. “Just by the fact that he works with you, you think you’re good,” said [photographer Annie] Liebowitz. “If he works with you a lot, maybe you think, Well, maybe I’m worthwhile.”