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The curse of the headshot
头像的诅咒
What explains the corporate custom of strange poses and painted smiles?
摆出奇怪姿势和标准微笑拍照的企业习俗应作何解释？
Do an image search for the word "business" or "manager", and what comes back? Nothing that remotely resembles business or managers. It isn't just that the people are attractive. It is what they are doing. Many stock photos feature well-dressed types sitting around a table. One of them is holding forth and everyone else is laughing madly, like cult members hearing that the Rapture has been brought forward a week.
输入"商业"或"经理"这个词来搜索图片，会有什么结果？一些和商业或者经理没有任何相似之处的东西。这不仅仅是因为图片里的人很有魅力。而是图片中人们在做什么。许多常见照片上都是衣着光鲜的人围坐在桌子旁。其中一个人滔滔不绝，其他人疯狂大笑，就像宗教成员听说"被提"要早一周来临一样。
In other pictures, a speaker is pointing at a pie chart. Her colleagues look astonished at what they are seeing. Or people are shaking hands, purposefully and often. If they are ever left to their own devices, they stand in front of floor-to-ceiling windows and gaze moodily at the skyline. What could they be thinking? Is it about what was on that pie chart?
在其他图片中，一位演讲者指着一张饼分图。她的同事们对所看到的东西感到非常惊讶。或者人们在刻意地、频繁地握手。如果是单独出现，他们会站在大落地窗前，忧郁地凝视着天际线。他们会在想什么呢？是不是在想那张饼分图上有什么？
Some amount of business life involves sitting around a table. Occasionally there is laughter. But if you wanted to represent the reality of a meeting, one person would be talking, two people would be listening and everyone else would be wearing the glazed expression of clerics who have just lost their faith. If there was an accurate stock photo of someone working at a desk, its surface would be covered in crumbs and the laptop screen would be showing its owner's social-media account.
在商业生活中，有时候确实需要围坐在桌子旁。偶尔也会有笑声。但如果想如实表现一场会议，那么应该是一个人在讲话，两个人在听，其他所有人都是一副刚刚失去信仰的神职人员的呆滞表情。如果是一张精确地表现某人在工位上工作的常见照片，那么桌子上应该撒满零零碎碎的东西，笔记本电脑的屏幕上会显示这个人的社交媒体页面。
The corporate headshot is the way that firms use photography to bend reality. But whereas stock photos tend to glamorise business, headshots achieve the reverse. They make corporate life seem less fun than it actually is.
企业头像是公司利用摄影来扭曲现实的方式。但是，尽管常见照片往往会美化企业，但头像却会实现相反的效果。它们让公司生活看起来没有实际那么有趣。
Most companies' websites contain a gallery of their senior executives and boards, the product of hours of awkward primping and posing. Executives are caked in make-up and asked to look into the camera with a succession of forced smiles. The results are consistently appalling. Most end up looking like well-dressed hostages. Someone, usually the general counsel, looks so pained that he or she appears to have just been Tasered. One or two eschew smiles altogether: in this context they are the hostage-takers.
大多数公司的网站都有高管和董事会成员的照片，这是几个小时的尴尬打扮和摆姿势的产物。高管们顶着厚厚的妆，被要求带着一连串强颜欢笑的表情看着镜头。结果总是令人惊骇的。大多数人最终看起来都像穿着考究的人质。有些人，通常是总法律顾问，看起来非常痛苦，就像他或她刚刚被电击了一样。有一两个人完全避免微笑：在这种情况下，他们就像是劫持人质的人。
