Anandi Ramamurthy's "Constructions of Illusion: Photography and Commodity Culture"

834 readings for inquiry
1 notes
2 1. For an introduction in English to these and other aspects of Guaman
3 Poma’s work, see Rolena Adorno. Adorno and Mercedes Lopez-Baralt pio-
4 neered the study of Andean symbolic systems in Guaman Poma.
5 2. It is far from clear that the Royal Commentaries was as benign as
6 the Spanish seemed to assume. The book certainly played a role in maintain-
7 ing the identity and aspirations of indigenous elites in the Andes. In the mid-
8 eighteenth century, a new edition of the Royal Commentaries was suppressed
9 by Spanish authorities because its preface included a prophecy by Sir Walter
Raleigh that the English would invade Peru and restore the Inca monarchy.
10
3. The discussion of community here is summarized from my essay “Lin-
11
guistic Utopias.”
12 4. For information about this program and the contents of courses
13 taught in it, write Program in Cultures, Ideas, Values (CIV), Stanford Univ.,
14 Stanford, CA 94305.
15
16 works cited
17
Adorno, Rolena. Guaman Poma de Ayala: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru.
18 Austin: U of Texas P, 1986.
19 Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread
20 of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1984.
21 Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca. Royal Commentaries of the Incas. 1613. Austin: U of
22 Texas P, 1966.
23 Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe. El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno. Manu-
24 script. Ed. John Murra and Rolena Adorno. Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1980.
25 Pratt, Mary Louise. “Linguistic Utopias.” The Linguistics of Writing. Ed. Nigel Fabb
26 et al. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1987. 48–66.
Treviño, Gloria. “Cultural Ambivalence in Early Chicano Prose Fiction.” Diss. Stan-
27
ford U, 1985.
28
29
30
31
32
33 Anandi Ramamurthy
34 Constructions of Illusion:
35
36 Photography and Commodity Culture
37
Anandi Ramamurthy is a senior lecturer in film and media studies at the
38
University of Central Lancashire in England and a registered researcher
39
for the British Film Institute. Her research focuses on advertising images
40 of Africans and Asians from the British colonies, more specifically the cul-
41 tural and economic impact of these racist advertisements. In addition, she
42 analyzes representations of postcolonialism and immigration in film. Her
43 article “Constructions of Illusion: Photography and Commodity Culture”
44 was originally published in the collection Photography: A Critical Introduc
S 45 tion (2000).
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ramamurthy constructions of illusion 835
Introduction 1
2
The Photograph as Commodity 3
To the late twentieth century, commodity relations rule our lives to such 1 4
an extent that we are often unaware of them as a specific set of historical, 5
social and economic relations which human beings have constructed. The 6
photograph is both a cultural tool which has been commodified as well as 7
a tool that has been used to express commodity culture through advertise- 8
ments and other marketing m aterial. Tagg has described the development 9
of photography as “a model of capitalist growth in the nineteenth century” 10
(Tagg 1988: 37). 11
Like any cultural and technical development, the development of pho- 2 12
tography has been influenced by its social and economic context. The rise 13
of commodity culture in the nineteenth century was a key influence on the 14
way in which this technology was developed and used. John Tagg’s essay 15
provides just one e xample of the way in which photographic genres were 16
affected by capitalism. He discusses the demand for photographic por- 17
traits by the rising middle and the lower-middle classes, keen for objects 18
symbolic of high social status. The photographic portraits were affordable 19
in price, yet were reminiscent of aristocratic social ascendancy signified 20
by “having one’s portrait done.” Tagg describes how the daguerreotype and 21
later the “cartes-de-visite” established an industry that had a vast clientele 22
and was ruled by this clientele’s “taste and acceptance of the conventional 23
devices and genres of official art” (Tagg 1988: 50). The commodification of 24
the photograph dulled the possible creativity of the new technology, by the 25
desire to reproduce a set of conventions already established within painted 26
portraiture. 27
If we look at other photographic genres, we can also observe the way 3 28
in which commodity culture has affected their development. Photojour- 29
nalism for instance, like other journalism, is primarily concerned with the 30
selling of newspapers, rather than the conveyance of “news.” For this rea- 31
son, news photos, as Susan Sontag has noted, have been concerned with 32
the production of “spectacle” (Sontag 1979). Just as photographic genres 33
have been affected by commerce, so has the development of photographic 34
technology. The “Instamatic” for instance was clearly developed in order 35
to expand camera use and camera ownership. In turn, this technology lim- 36
ited the kind of photographs people c ould take (Slater 1983). 37
Were this chapter to discuss the commodification of photography in 4 38
detail, it would be difficult to limit it, and it would most likely encroach 39
on the subject area of every chapter in this book. Therefore this chapter 40
will concentrate on the way photography has been used in representing 41
commodity culture. In this sense, it will be as much about the decoding of 42
visual commercial messages as about photography. Although the focus is 43
on the specific qualities of photography in the production of commercial 44
messages, photography forms part of a broader system of visual commu- 45 S
nication including painting, printing, as well as the broadcast media. 46 R
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1 Photographs to Represent Commodity Culture

2 The use of photography within advertising and marketing does not consti- 5
3 tute a particular genre. In fact, this area of photography borrows from all
4 established genres, depending on particular marketing needs. Within the
5 traditional “history of photography,” commercial photography has been
6 ignored, despite the fact that photography produced for advertising and
7 marketing constitutes the largest quantity of photographic production.
8 One possible reason for the lack of documentation and history-writing in
9 this area is that commercial photography has not sought to stretch the
10 medium of photography. One of the key characteristics of photography
11 within advertising and marketing is its parasitism. It borrows and mimics
12 from every genre of photographic and cultural practice to enhance and
13 alter the meaning of lifeless objects — commodities.
14 Commodities are in fact objects — often inert — that have been imbued 6
15 with all kinds of social characteristics in the marketplace. Marx called
16 this process the fetishism of commodities, since in the marketplace (which
17 means every place where things have been bought and sold) the social
18 character of people’s labor was no longer apparent and it was the products
19 of their labor instead that interacted and were prominent. Advertising, in
20 its turn, imbues these products with meanings which have no relation to
21 the production processes of these objects. Advertising is a cultural form
22 which is integrally linked to capitalism, and constitutes part of the system
23 of production and consumption. Raymond Williams has discussed this
24 relationship and the development of advertising in his essay “Advertising
25 the Magic System” (Williams 1980). Thomas Richards, in a discussion of
26 Victorian advertisements, describes commodity culture as the “culture of
27 capitalism” (Richards 1990: 1–16). As Robert Goldman points out, “ads
28 offer a unique window for observing how commodity interests conceptu-
29 alise social relations” (Goldman 1992: 2). The representation of social rela-
30 tions in advertising has also been discussed in other texts on the history
31 and study of advertising (Leiss et al. 1986; Myers 1986).
32 Photographs have played an important role in the production of signs, 7
33 that have invested products with what Marxists have described as false
34 meanings. They have also played an important role in the representation
35 of commodity culture — namely, the culture of capitalism — as natural and
36 eternal. (For a discussion on this, see Barthes 1977a.) In this way photo-
37 graphs in advertisements are a key tool for the making of ideology.
38
39 Breadth of Usage
40 The range of contexts within which photographs are used to sell products 8
41 or services is so enormous that we are almost unaware of the medium of
42 photography and the language which has been created to convey commer-
43 cial messages. Photographs for commerce appear on everything from the
44 glossy, high-quality billboard and magazine advertisements, to small, cheap
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of usage, including the mundane images in mail-order information and 1

catalogues, the seemingly matter-of-fact, but high-quality documentary- 2
style images of company annual reports, the varied quality of commodity 3
packaging, and of course the photography on marketing materials such 4
as calendars, produced by companies to enhance their status. While there 5
are a number of critiques on advertising imagery, these tend not to be con- 6
cerned with the photograph in particular. Other areas of commercial pho- 7
tographic production have received relatively no critical attention from 8
scholars. If any history or literature has been written, it has tended to be 9
commissioned by the companies themselves, or their associates, such as 10
Thirsty Work: Ten Years of Heineken Advertising and Some Examples of Ben 11
son Advertising. These publications have also been unconcerned with the 12
photographic aspect. More recently, a rticles such as Carol Squiers’ “The 13
Corporate Year in Pictures” have begun to provide an analysis to some of 14
this photography (Squiers 1992). 15
Much of the discussion will focus on advertising, partly because it 9 16
is an area rich for discussion, but also because it will enable us to con- 17
sider some of the literature which critiques this photography. Through a 18
closer look at ads we can understand the ideological significance of them 19
and other commercial photographs in our lives as well as the hegemony 20
of commodity culture. By analyzing a run-of-the-mill advertisement, we 21
can understand how advertisements are constructed and act ideologically 22
to support commodity culture, and can also see how photographs are 23
employed in the making of ideology. 24
25
26
Case Study: Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion — 27
The Commodification of Human Relations 28
29
The main photograph in the advertisement is a rather soft focus dreamy 10 30
image of the head and shoulders of Elizabeth Taylor, who appears to be 31
wearing nothing but some diamond studded jewellery. Bright lights (per- 32
haps stage lights) reflect off the jewelery and Taylor herself to present an 33
image which is one of stardom. From our own cultural history we know 34
that Liz Taylor has been associated with heroines such as Cleopatra — a 35
passionate, determined, and arresting woman. 36
A crystal clear photograph of the bottle has been inserted into the 11 37
main photograph on the right-hand side. The juxtaposition of b ottle and 38
Elizabeth Taylor’s face in the advertisement obviously encourages their 39
association. Purples and pinks within both images also affiliate the two 40
images. The historical and cultural associations which we make with Liz 41
Taylor through her film career are associated here with a bottle of scented 42
liquid. Interestingly, under the bottle of perfume is written “Elizabeth Tay- 43
lor’s Passion.” This lifeless b
ottle of liquid appears to have been given a 44
human quality. There is another possibility of meaning too — the b ottle is 45 S
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1 not her passion, despite the use of the possessive, but is the object of her
2 passion. This notion is also enhanced by the glass object which Elizabeth
3 Taylor appears to hold. It is the glass stopper from the perfume bottle.
4 Liz Taylor has obviously opened the bottle and unleashed “passion,” as
5 though it is a quantifiable thing which can be bottled and unleashed in
6 this way! Whether we interpret the perfume as containing Elizabeth Tay-
7 lor’s passion or being the object of her passion, the metamorphosis of the
8 commodity as in some way human is complete. In the first instance it con-
9 tains a human quality; in the second, passion — a human emotion, which
10 occurs between people — takes place here, between a person and thing.
11 The photographic montage is crucial in this creation of meaning. There
12 is another statement in the advertisement which makes it resonate with
13 further meanings: “Be touched by the fragrance that touches the woman.”
14 Here, we are invited to join in an experience in which stars have taken
15 part. Yet, we are not simply coaxed into consumption by suggestions of
16 glamour and beauty which Taylor may represent for us. The suggestion
17 is also that she is the woman, imbued with qualities of womanliness. The
18 image of Liz Taylor is of course one of standard femininity; she is even
19 looking upwards, suggesting subservience. Her passivity is also increased
20 by the way she holds the bottle stopper. She hardly seems to hold it at all.
21 We cannot imagine those hands actually pulling open the bottle. One easy
22 avenue offered to us in the search to be not just Elizabeth Taylor, but also
23 womanly, is to use Passion. The commodification of human relations is
24 one of the most pervasive influences of modern advertising, and photogra-
25 phy plays an important role in creating images expressive of human emo-
26 tions and relations which are used to give products superficial or “false”
27 meanings. The pervasive nature of advertisements and the power of the
28 photographic image not only leads us to be unaware of a process, which,
29 when considered rationally, appears absurd, but also enhances these sur-
30 face meanings above those of other product meanings which may exist
31 through manufacture. What does it cost to produce the perfume? How
32 much were the factory workers who produced and packaged Passion paid?
33 Were they allowed to join a union? What were the health and safety con-
34 ditions for the workers like? Was Passion tested on animals, and did it
35 lead to animal suffering? Only eight cents out of every dollar in the cos-
36 metics industry goes towards buying ingredients. Even this one piece of
37 information can make us realize how l ittle the advertisement tells us about
38 the products in production. At the same time the ads provide an alluring
39 image, the constructed meanings of which are enhanced by photographic
40 realism, creating a culture in which it appears natural not even to want
41 to know the context of production. These constructed meanings are not
42 simply illusions; rather “they accurately portray social relations which are
43 illusory” (Goldman 1992: 35).
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The Grammar of the Ad 1

2
The Photographic Message 3
The photographic message, as Roland Barthes wrote, is made up of both 12 4
a denoted message and a connoted message (Barthes 1977b). By the 5
denoted message Barthes meant the literal reality which the photograph 6
portrayed. In the case of the ad for Passion (see case study above), this 7
would be the image of Liz Taylor and the perfume b ottle. The second, 8
connoted, message is one which he described as making use of social and 9
historical references. The connoted message is the inferred message. It is 10
symbolic. It is a message with a code — i.e., Liz Taylor signifies beauty, 11
passion, feminity, nobility, and mystique. When we look at the documen- 12
tary photograph, the denoted image appears dominant. We believe the 13
photograph to be “fact,” although, as Tagg has pointed out, it is impossible 14
to have a s imple ‘denoted’ message — all messages are constructed (Tagg 15
1988: 1–5). All photos are simulations and record moments discontinuous 16
with normal time, and documentary images are highly coded both by the 17
photographer’s perspective and the privileging of certain moments, and 18
also by the newspaper captioning of an image. The image for use in adver- 19
tising, however, is different, in that we know from the start that it is highly 20
structured. In the discussion on passion, I have already mentioned how 21
the photograph of Elizabeth Taylor does not show her holding the bottle 22
stopper properly. It is obviously a constructed and coded image. The play 23
of light and the soft focus used in her portrait are also constructions, here 24
used to convey romance. The use of soft focus in photography has often 25
been used to signify romance and also femininity, as Pollock has men- 26
tioned in her reading of a Levi’s advertisement (Pollock 1990: 215–216). 27
The commercial photograph is not therefore perceived as primarily docu- 28
menting real life. We are therefore unconsciously aware when reading the 29
image that the connoted message is the crucial one. 30
However, while we know these images to be highly constructed, we are 13 31
often unaware of the ways in which meaning is framed within them. The 32
framing and structural devices which advertisers use are so well estab- 33
lished that we read them unwittingly. Robert Goldman has described the 34
classic advertising format as that of “the mortise and frame” (Goldman 35
1992: 61–85). He intends us to understand framing as the process of “selec- 36
tion, emphasis and presentation,” and describes how all photographs are 37
framed in production. In the ad for Passion, the photograph of Liz Tay- 38
lor, for example, has been framed in such a way as to exclude any clothed 39
part of her body, in order to increase its sexuality. A mortise, as Goldman 40
notes, is a joiners’ term for the joining of two pieces of wood together by 41
making a cavity in one, into which a second piece is inserted. In the pro- 42
duction of advertisements, the mortise in the small boxed image which 43
usually contains the image of the product (e.g., the bottle of perfume). The 44
photograph of the product is usually in a clear ‘showroom’ style, which 45 S
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1 suggests that it is purely documentary, but its frontal angle is one that we
2 would never see in real life. This clear and stark style in itself sets it apart
3 from the larger and usually more atmospheric photographic image, while
4 they are structurally associated in the advertisement. Through this device,
5 advertisers encourage us to combine the meaning of two separate and
6 often seemingly incompatible messages. In the ad for Passion, the image
7 of Liz Taylor and her human qualities of being a passionate woman are
8 transferred to a b ottle of perfume; i.e., a m aterial thing is given human
9 value and a human emotion is defined materially. Judith Williamson also
10 discusses the association of two separate images in advertisements in her
11 book Decoding Advertisements. She makes the important point that the
12 process of association is one that actively involves the viewer in the pro-
13 duction of meaning. She describes the viewer’s role in producing meaning
14 as “advertising work” (Williamson 1978: 15–19).
15 While it is useful to consider the form separately, Judith Williamson 14
16 has also noted that it is impossible to divide the form and content entirely,
17 since there is content in the form also. Most scholars considering ques-
18 tions of representation use methods first discussed in linguistics to decode
19 visual signs (Williamson 1978: 17):
20
21 A sign is quite simply a thing — whether object, word or thing — which has a
particular meaning to a person or group of people. It is neither the thing nor
22
the meaning alone, but the two together.
23
The sign consists of the signifier, the material object, and the signified,
24 which is its meaning. These are only divided for analytical purposes; in prac-
25 tice a sign is always thing-plus-meaning.
26
27 In the ad for Passion, Liz Taylor is the signifier of passion, which is 15
28 the meaning signified. Through the structure of the ad, the perfume b ottle
29 also acts as a signifier of passion, although it does not actually have such
30 a meaning. It is the “work” we do in reading the grammar of the ad — in
31 reading its structure of form — that leads to the connection between the
32 two signifiers being made.
33
34 The Transfer of Meaning
35 In his essay “Encoding/Decoding,” Stuart Hall has considered our involve- 16
36 ment in the production of meaning in more detail (Hall 1993). He discusses
37 how images are first “encoded” by the producer, and then “decoded” by
38 the viewer. The transfer of meaning in this process only works if there are
39 compatible systems of signs and symbols which the encoder and decoder
40 use within their cultural life. However, our background — i.e., our gender,
41 class, ethnic origin, sexuality, religion, etc. — all affect our interpretation
42 of signs and symbols. For this reason, Hall points to the fact that messages
43 are not always read as they were intended to be. He suggests that there
44 are three possible readings of an image: a dominant or preferred read-
S 45 ing, a negotiated reading, and an oppositional one. The dominant reading
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would comply with the meaning intended by the producer of the image. 1
The importance of readers interpreting images as they were intended is 2
obviously crucial for commercial messages, and is one of the reasons why 3
advertisers use the various framing devices which have been discussed 4
above. Hall describes the negotiated reading as one which only partly 5
conforms to the intended, dominant meaning. Finally the oppositional 6
reading is one which is in total conflict with the meaning intended by the 7
image-producer. A feminist interpretation of the advertisement for pas- 8
sion, which challenged the notion of “womanliness” presented by the ad, 9
could be viewed as oppositional. Examples of ordinary people producing 10
oppositional readings through graffiti have been collected by Jill Posner 11
in Spray It Loud (Posner 1982). In Reading Ads Socially, Robert Goldman 12
cites an example of a cigarette advertisement which was misinterpreted 13
by many readers to create an oppositional meaning. In 1986, Kent ciga- 14
rettes launched an ad campaign which depicted two p eople flying a kite 15
on a page. In order to involve the viewer in the advertisement, the adver- 16
tiser emptied the figures of content so that the reader could literally place 17
themselves in the ad. Viewers, however, interpreted the silhouetted fig- 18
ures as ghosts because of the health warnings about smoking to which we 19
have been accustomed (Goldman 1992: 80–81). The question of reception 20
brings in to doubt the notion of global advertising which companies such 21
as Coca-Cola and Benetton have tried to create. Can there r eally be world- 22
wide advertising campaigns? People across the world will surely find dif- 23
ferent symbolic meanings in the same signifiers. 24
25
The Creation of Meaning in Photographic Styles 26
All photographs will be viewed by different people in different ways, 17 27
whether in commercial contexts or not. The same photograph can also 28
mean different things in different contexts. The commercial context, for 29
example, can change the meaning of an image, just as different styles of 30
photography will carry different messages. Let us look at an advertise- 31
ment which does not use a style of photography normally associated with 32
advertising. Because advertisers have traditionally been concerned with 33
creating glamorous, fantasy worlds of desire for their products, they have 34
tended to shy away from the stark, grainy, black and white type of imagery 35
traditionally associated with documentary images and photojournalism, 36
and have gone instead for glossy, high-color photography. Yet, at times of 37
company crisis, or when companies have wanted to deliberately foster an 38
image of no-nonsense frankness, they have used black and white imag- 39
ery. In 1990, a short while after Nelson Mandela was released from jail by 40
the South African authorities, the Anglo-American Corporation of South 41
Africa brought out an advertisement entitled “Do we sometimes wish we 42
had not fought to have Black trade unions recognized?” Underneath this 43
title was a documentary photograph of a Black South African miner, in a 44
show of victory (see page 842). At a moment when Anglo-American foresaw 45 S
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South African miners demonstrating outside the offices of the Organization of
25
South African Mine Owners, (Independent, 26 August 1987). This photograph
26 was used, torn from the newspaper page as it is here, by the Anglo-American
27 Corporation of South Africa in their advertisement DO WE SOMETIMES WISH
28 WE HAD NOT FOUGHT TO HAVE BLACK TRADE UNIONS RECOGNIZED?
29 (Published in the Guardian, 2 April 1990.)
30
31
32 massive economic and political change, they attempted to distance them-
33 selves from the apartheid regime. Yet Anglo-American was by far the larg-
34 est company in South Africa, “with a new total grip over large sectors of the
35 apartheid economy.”1 While presenting this advertisement to the public,
36 De Beers — Anglo’s sister company, in which they had a 35 percent stake —
37 also cancelled their recognition agreement with the NUM at the Premier
38 Diamond Mines, despite 90 percent of workers belonging to the union. The
39 frank and honest style of address which black and white provided hid the
40 reality for black workers in South Africa. The miner depicted was in fact
41 celebrating his victory against Anglo-American in 1987. Here, at another
42 moment of crisis, Anglo-American have appropriated this image of resis-
43 tance. The parasitism of advertising enables it to use and discard any style
44 and content for its own ends. Anglo-American are no longer interested in
S 45 fostering this image (they declined permission to have the advertisement
R 46 reproduced here). There is an added irony in Anglo-American’s use of this
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image, since it is not strictly speaking a documentary image at all, but a 1

montage of two images to capture the mood of the strike as the Indepen 2
dent saw it. 3
Black and white imagery has been used in other company contexts 18 4
at moments of crisis. Carol Squiers has discussed the way in which they 5
have been used in annual reports. Black and white, she notes, “looks more 6
modest and costs less to print.” As Arnold Saks, a corporate designer, 7
said: “There’s an honesty about black and white, a reality. . . . Black and 8
white is the only reality” (Squiers 1992: 208). The symbolic value of using 9
or not using a photograph has also been important for advertisers. Kathy 10
Myers has explored the moments when advertisers have chosen to use and 11
not use photographic images in an attempt to find symbols of ecological 12
awareness (Myers 1990). 13
14
15
Hegemony in Photographic Representation 16
17
Commercial photography constantly borrows ideas and images from the 19 18
wider cultural domain. It is clear that when we point the camera we frame 19
it in a thousand and one ways through our own cultural conditioning. Pho- 20
tographs, like other cultural products, have therefore tended to perpetuate 21
ideas which are dominant in society. Commercial photographs, because of 22
their profuse nature and because they have never sought to challenge the 23
status quo within society (since they are only produced to sell products), 24
have also aided in the construction and perpetuation of stereotypes, to the 25
point at which they have appeared natural and eternal (see Barthes 1977a; 26
Williamson 1978, part 2). Through commercial photography we can there- 27
fore explore hegemonic constructs of, for e xample, race, gender, and class. 28
29
Photomontage — Concealing Social Relations 30
One of the key ways in which commercial photography has sought to 20 31
determine particular readings of images and products has been through 32
photomontage. Advertisements are in fact simple photomontages pro- 33
duced for commercial purposes, although most books on the technique 34
seem to ignore this expansive area. While left photographers like Heart- 35
field use photomontage to make invisible social relations visible, advertis- 36
ers have used montage to conceal “reality.” One of the peculiar advantages 37
of photomontage, as John Berger wrote in his essay “The Political Uses of 38
Photomontage,” is the fact that “everything which has been cut out keeps 39
its familiar photographic appearance. We are still looking first at things 40
and only afterwards at symbols” (Berger 1972b; 1985). This creates a sense 41
of naturalness about an image or message which is in fact constructed. 42
An early e xample of the photomontage naturalizing social relations has 43
been discussed by Sally Stein, who considers “the reception of photogra- 44
phy within the larger matrix of socially organized communication,” and 45 S
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1 and the way these ideas were also applied to domestic work (Stein 1981:
2 42–44). She also notes how expensive it was to have photomechanical
3 reproductions within a book in the early part of the century.
4 Yet in Mrs. Christine Frederick’s 1913 tract, The New Housekeeping, 21
5 there were eight pages of glossy photographic images. This must have
6 impressed the average reader. In her chapter on the new efficiency as
7 applied to cooking, an image was provided which affirmed this ideology as
8 the answer to women’s work. The image consisted of a line drawing of an
9 open card file, organized into types of dishes, and an example of a recipe
10 card with a photograph of an elaborate lamb dish (see page 845). Despite
11 Frederick’s interest in precision, the card, which would logically be delin-
12 eated by a black rectangular frame, does not match the dimensions of the
13 file, nor does it contain practical information such as cost, number of serv-
14 ings, etc., which Frederick suggests in her text. As Stein points out, how-
15 ever, most readers must have overlooked this point when confronted with
16 this luscious photographic image, which they would have accepted at face
17 value.
18
Because the page is not clearly divided between the file in one half and the
19 recipe card in the other but instead flows uninterruptedly between drawing
20 below, text of recipe, and photograph of the final dish, the meticulous orga-
21 nization of the file alone seems responsible for the full flowering of the dish.
22 As a symbolic representation of modern house work, what you have in short
23 order is a strict hierarchy, with an emblem of the family feast at its pinnacle.
24 — Stein 1981: 43
25 The more down-to-earth questions of time and money are ignored and
26 almost banished. In response to those who believed that her reading was
27 too contrived, Stein wrote: “If it seems that I am reading too much into
28 this composite image, one need only note the title of Frederick’s subse-
29 quent publication — Meals that Cook Themselves” (Stein 1992).
30 There are two key issues we can draw from Stein’s analysis. Firstly, 22
31 the example highlights the power of the photographic image to foster
32 desire. While a rather ordinary image of a cake may have impressed an
33 early twentieth-century audience, in the late twentieth century we are also
34 mesmerized and impressed by the use of the latest technology, and it is
35 still used to seduce us. Digital image-making is probably the field which is
36 most effectively used today to capture our attention. We can see this clearly
37 within TV commercials, such as the recent advertisements for Guinness
38 and Holsten Pils lager. Spellbinding technology is also used within print
39 advertisements, especially for photographic equipment. Ektakron film, for
40 example, used a close-up of a bird’s beak in 1989 to stun the viewer and
41 the p
ossible detail that c ould be achieved by using this film. The impact of
42 the latest technology makes us forget the context of production, and the
43 immediacy of the image makes the surface reality seem more real.
44
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1 Concealing Labor Relations

2 The second issue that Stein’s analysis elucidates is the power of photomon- 23
3 tage in the commercial context to conceal labor relations. Judith William-
4 son has also discussed this with regard to a Lancia car advertisement from
5 around 1978. The image depicts the Lancia Beta in an Italian vineyard. It
6 shows a man who appears to be the owner, standing on the far side of the
7 car with his back towards us, looking over a vineyard in which a number
8 of peasants are working happily. In the distance, on a hill, is an old castle
9 (this image is illustrated in Williamson 1979).
10 Williamson asks a series of questions: 24
11
Who made this car? Has it just emerged new and gleaming from the soil, its
12 finished form as much a product of nature as the grapes on the vine? . . . Who
13 are these peasants? Have they made the car out in this most Italian field? . . .
14 How can a car even exist in these feudal relations, how can such a contra
15 diction be carried off? . . . What is this, if not a complete slipping over of the
16 capitalist mode of production, as we survey a set of feudal class relations
17 represented by the surveying gaze of possession, the look of the landlord
18 with his back to us?
19 — Williamson 1979: 53
20 Williamson also notes how the feudal Italian owner’s gaze does not encom-
21 pass both care (the product of industrial capitalism) and the owner’s field
22 of vision (the relations of Italian feudalism). She discusses the structure
23 of the advertisement in order to understand why we don’t question the
24 contradictions of the image. The ad uses the traditional grammar of car
25 advertisements with the showroom-effect camera angle, which intersects
26 with the representation of “Italianness.” The positioning of the car seems
27 so casual that the man leaning against it could have just stopped to have
28 a break and look at this Italian view. Maybe he is not Italian? Perhaps he
29 will drive off and leave the “most Italian” scene behind. The narrative of
30 chance on the horizontal axis of the photograph naturalises the vertical
31 axis of Italian castle feudal relations and commodity ownership.
32 Contemporary advertisements also provide e xamples of the romanti- 25
33 cized and non-industrial working environments. Hovis and other whole-
34 meal bread producers have often used the image of the family bakery.
35 Whisky distillers have also used this image to represent their brand as one
36 which has been produced with special attention and one that has the expe-
37 rience of time behind it. . . .
38
39 Gendered Representations
40 Much of the literature which considers racist and sexist imagery, whilst 26
41 using commercial photography for examples, has tended to discuss broader
42 cultural readings rather than the commercial or photographic context.
43 This section will discuss gendered representations.
44 The stereotypical and highly coded representations of women in popu- 27
S 45 lar culture have been given attention by many critics (Berger 1972a; Win-
R 46 ship 1987a, 1987b; Williamson 1978). One of the key criticisms has been
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Women’s hands have traditionally been photographed in ways that make them
20
appear passive and decorative.
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23
the way in which ads always represent women as objects to be surveyed. 24
This has tended to increase the representation of women as objects to be 25
surveyed. This has tended to increase the representation of women as 26
both passive and objects of sexual desire. Erving Goffman has explored 27
the body language used to represent men and women in his book Gender 28
Advertisements to show how women in particular have been photographed 29
for advertisements in ways that perpetuate gender roles (Goffman 1979). 30
It is important to remember that the photographer always surveys his 31
or her subject and personally selects what is believed to be worth pho- 32
tographing. The photographic process can also, therefore, exacerbate the 33
voyeuristic gaze. 34
To understand the way in which men’s and women’s bodies are cod- 28 35
ified, we can look at the representation of hands in advertisements (see 36
Winship 1987a). While male hands are often represented as active in 37
advertising, female hands are usually represented as passive and deco- 38
rative. In the Passion advertisement described earlier, for e xample, Liz 39
Taylor did not even seem to be holding the bottle stopper properly; her 40
hands were simply represented decoratively. In the ad above the female 41
hand appears passive, with the cigarette only propped lightly between 42
her fingers. It is also the woman’s body — represented by fragments of her 43
body here — that are highlighted as objects of sexual pleasure through the 44
bright red nail polish. Today this coding continues, even in advertisements 45 S
which appear to represent a degree of partnership. An advertisement for 46 R
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1 Donna Karan perfume shows the male hands still taking the key role in an
2 embrace. The man’s arms practically cross the whole double-page spread.
3 In contrast, the woman’s hands s imply curve upwards to touch his arms
4 gently. Her action and pose do not enable her to play an equally active role
5 in the embrace.
6 The fragmentation of the body — particularly women’s bodies — is a 29
7 feature of recent commercial photography. It makes the body more eas-
8 ily commodified and, with that, desire is also more easily packaged. In
9 a content analysis of lipstick ads, Robert Goldman has pointed out that
10 while most lipstick ads in 1946 depicted the whole body of a woman, by
11 1977 most ads only showed a part of the body (see ad on page 849). In this
12 way beauty too is fragmented and commodified into ideal “types” of lips,
13 noses, eyes, etc. One of the most famous examples of this fragmentation
14 is the early 1980s advertisement for Pretty Polly tights, which depicted a
15 woman’s legs appearing out of an egg. This objectification and fragmenta-
16 tion of a woman’s body received criticism at the time, with graffiti that read
17 “born kicking.” As Pollock indicates, it was only “after Picasso had visually
18 hacked up the body, [that] we have been gradually accustomed to the cut-
19 ting up of specifically feminine bodies: indeed, their cut-up-ness has come
20 to be seen as a sign of that femininity.” Significantly, Pollack adds that this
21 “came to be naturalized by photographic representation in film, advertis-
22 ing, and pornography, all of which are discourses about desire that utilize
23 the dialectic of fantasy and reality effects associated with the hegemonic
24 modes of photographic representation” (Pollack 1990: 218; my emphasis).
25
26
27 Fashion Photography
28
29 So far I have concentrated on photographs within advertising, yet we 30
30 cannot allow this area to subsume all discussion on photographs for com-
31 merce. Here, it is worth considering the genre of fashion photography,
32 since this area of commercial photography has been particularly targeted
33 with regard to discussions on the construction of femininity and gendered
34 representations.
35 In The Face of Fashion, Jennifer Craik provides an historical account 31
36 of the techniques of fashion photography from early photographic pic-
37 torialism of the nineteenth century, through the gendered constructions
38 of the 1920s and 1930s which increasingly represented women as com-
39 modities, to the increasing dominance of the fashion photographer in
40 the 1960s and the influence of filmatic techniques which led to clothes
41 becoming more and more incidental within the fashion photograph. Craik
42 also draws our attention to the increasing eroticism of 1970s and 1980s
43 fashion photography. Most importantly she notes that the conventions of
44 fashion photography are “neither fixed nor purposeful” (Craik 1994: 114).
S 45 It is perhaps for this reason that critical literature on the genre as a whole
R 46 is sparse. Most of what has been written does not provide a critique of
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feature of contemporary commercial photography.
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the genre as a whole, but tends to consider the constructions of gender 26
and sexuality within these images. Femininity, as Craik notes, “became 27
co-extensive with the fashion photograph” by the 1930s. The heightened 28
sexuality of the fashion image in the 1970s and 1980s, with the work of 29
photographers such as Helmut Newton, has been discussed by Rosetta 30
Brooks (Brooks 1992: 17–24). 31
The way in which women read fashion images of women has also been 32 32
explored (see Evans and Thornton 1989: ch. 5). As Berger commented: “Men 33
look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at” (Berger 1972a: 34
47). As far as the photographic quality of the spreads are concerned, these 35
have tended to be discussed in books, often commissioned by commer- 36
cial enterprises such as Vogue, which eulogize these images and their 37
relationship to “Art” photography. In this process the work of individual 38
photographers has been discussed, rather than the genre itself. It is worth 39
noting that even in their discussions of the fashion image and sexuality, 40
that Brooks, as well as Evans and Thornton, discussed the issue through 41
key examples of work by particular photographers. Their essays provide 42
critical case studies of fashion images from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s 43
by photographers such as Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, and Deborah 44
Turbeville. In marking out fashion photography as an area for discussion, 45 S
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1 to the fashion photographs of the average mail-order catalogue, which

2 could be described as fashion illustration.
3 Several signs or features of the fashion image which have been pointed 33
4 out by various writers are worth considering together in order to under-
5 stand the genre. Firstly, the transitory nature of fashion has impacted on
6 the fashion image. Evans and Thornton have discussed this in terms of the
7 ability of the fashion image to take “extraordinary liberties” and get away
8 with images which are unduly violent, pornographic, or outrageous. Polly
9 Devlin has pointed out the contradictory nature of the fashion image’s
10 transitoriness, by their aim to be both timely and timeless: “Its subject is
11 a product with built-in obsolescence, and the result may be an amusing,
12 ephemeral picture or a monumental statement” (Devlin 1979: 113).
13 There are other contradictions apparent within the fashion image. 34
14 Rosetta Brooks has suggested that in fashion photography “we see the
15 typical instead of the unique moment or event.” Yet, at the same time as
16 producing the typical, fashion photographers have aimed to construct
17 a sense of what is original and unique within a particular fashion. They
18 have also tried to produce images which stand their ground beyond the
19 transitory space of the magazine and the transitory nature of fashion, and
20 for example enter the gallery or the coffee-table book. The Vogue Book of
21 Fashion Photography and the major Victoria and Albert Museum exhibi-
22 tion and its accompanying catalogue Appearances: Fashion Photography
23 since 1945 are testament to this conflict (Devlin 1979: Harrison 1991).
24 Both provide a good collection of images of the classical fashion photo-
25 graph, although the historical essays tend to be uncritical of the genre. It
26 is clear that there are tensions in the relationship between fashion pho-
27 tography and both advertising photography and “Art” photography. The
28 fashion image attempts to stand aloof from the undiluted commercial con-
29 text of advertising, since most fashion spreads are commissioned by maga-
30 zines which are not directly selling clothes. Yet the undeniable commercial
31 angle has separated it from the “Art” photograph, despite the inevitable
32 commercial context of the latter.
33 The relationship of the fashion spread to magazines rather than the 35
34 manufacturers also emphasises the importance of the images’ ability to
35 project “a look, an image, a world” (Evans and Thornton 1989: 82). Their
36 aim is not simply to highlight clothes, but rather to create identities. This
37 construction has affected all fashion images, including those now pro-
38 duced by manufacturers. As Steve Edwards wrote, with regards to the Next
39 Directory:
40
As we flip the pages multiple identities whiz past our eyes. Distance and depth
41 collapse into the intricate and exquisite surface of the image. What is there
42 now to prevent us switching back and forth between these marvelous identi-
43 ties” She: now sipping tea on the lawn of the country seat, bathed in golden
44 light, “well-dressed, well-bred,” in that “endless summer.” Now the belle of
S 45 the southern states, young and raw, perhaps with an illicit negro lover. Now
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the cultured woman, on her travels through Europe in search of adventure. 1

He: from the big city gentleman, to the rugged biker, to the fictions of Havana. 2
These are the worlds that the photograph has to offer. . . . Our only choice 3
is between its choices, we have no choice but to consume . . . or so the argu- 4
ment goes.
5
— Edwards 1989: 5
6
In constructing these identities, fashion photography also allows us to 7
view the social attitudes of a period. 8
In creating worlds of illusion, fashion photography has been influ- 36 9
enced by all other areas of photographic practice. Early portrait photogra- 10
phy and the carte-devisite had already established ways of photographing 11
people in fashionable or dramatic clothing, which were adopted by early 12
fashion photographers (Ewing 1991: 6–10). Fashion photographers such 13
as André Barre, Irving Penn, and Erwin Blumenfield have also been influ- 14
enced by Surrealism. The power of photojournalism and documentary 15
photography in the 1930s also affected fashion images, especially as pho- 16
tographers moved between the genres. Yet, the concentration on what is 17
contrived and stylized rather than the “captured” moment, so revered in 18
documentary, continues to set it apart. Films have also influenced fashion 19
photography, both in terms of content and the creation of looks and styles 20
and the way in which we are able to read what would otherwise appear 21
as fragmentary and disjointed image sequences in the fashion spread. In 22
creating images and “looks,” the fashion photograph — in its attempts to 23
always find something new, different, glamorous, and often “exotic” — has 24
also been influenced by the increasing experience of international travel. 25
In the following case study we will therefore explore fashion and travel 26
images together. This should indicate the impossibility of considering 27
various commercial image-making forms in isolation. We live in a world 28
dominated by lifestyle culture, whose conventions are “neither fixed nor 29
purposeful.” 30
31
32
Case Study: Tourism, Fashion and “the Other” 33
34
In this case study we will consider a particular hegemonic construction 37 35
from the nineteenth century — that of the exotic/primitive “Other” — and 36
explore the way in which it has been exploited in the commercial world. 37
Some of the most dominant ideological and photographic constructs were 38
developed during the nineteenth century, a period of European imperial 39
expansion. This history has affected the representation of black people in 40
all forms of photographic practice (see Gupta 1986; Bailey 1988; Ten/8 16; 41
Ten/8 2(3)). During the nineteenth century, the camera joined the gun in the 42
process of colonization. The camera was used to record and define those 43
who were colonized according to the interests of the West. This unequal 44
relationship of power between the white photographer and the colonized 45 S
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1 subject has been discussed by many (Bate 1993; Schildkrout 1991; Pro-
2 chaska 1991; Freedman 1990; Edwards 1992). These early anthropologi-
3 cal and geographical photographers were sometimes paid employees of
4 companies who organized campaigns to explore new markets. Emile Tor-
5 day, for e xample — an anthropologist who used photography as a research
6 aid — was paid by the Belgian Kasai Company to explore the Congo.
7 This history of photography is integrally linked to colonial and eco- 38
8 nomic exploitation. A sense of submission, exoticism, and the “primitive”
9 were key feelings, which these photographers documented and catalogued.
10 Through these images, the European photographer and viewer c ould per-
11 ceive their own superiority. Europe was defined as “the norm” upon which
12 all other cultures should be judged. That which was different was disem-
13 powered by its very “Otherness.”
14 During the period, the sense of “Otherness” and exoticism was not 39
15 only captured “in the field” but was also exploited by photographers work-
16 ing in commercial enterprises. Malek Alloula has documented the genre of
17 exotic/erotic colonial postcards which were sent by French colonists back
18 to France. In his book The Colonial Harem he discusses images of Algerian
19 women taken by French studio photographers in Algeria (Alloula 1987).
20 In the confines of the studio, French photographers constructed visions
21 of exoticism which suited their own colonial fantasies and those of the
22 European consumers of these images. The paid Algerian models could
23 only remain silent to the colonizers’ abuse of their bodies. These images
24 encapsulate Edward Said’s description of Flaubert’s Egyptian courtesan:
25
26 She never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions, her presence
or history. He spoke for and represented her. He was foreign, comparatively
27
wealthy, male, and these were historical facts of domination that allowed him
28
not only to possess Kuchuk Hanem physically but to speak for her and tell his
29 readers in what way she was typically oriental.
30 — Said 1985: 6
31
32 The dominance of photographs of women in these commercial images is
33 not by chance. Colonial power could be more emphatically represented
34 through gendered relations — the white, wealthy male photographer ver-
35 sus the non-white, poor female subject. These images, bought and sold in
36 their thousands, reflect the commodification of women’s bodies generally
37 in society. They are also part of the development of postcard culture which
38 enabled the consumption of photographs by millions. The production of
39 exotic postcards also brought photographs of the “Empire” and the non-
40 European world into every European home. It was not only the photo-
41 graphs of non-European women which were sold: landscape photographs,
42 which constructed Europe as developed and the non-European world
43 as under-developed, were also popular (Prochaska 1991). These colonial
44 visions continue to pervade contemporary travel photography, not only
S 45 through postcards, but also in travel brochures and tourist ephemera.
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Tourism 1
Today, many areas of commercial photography exploit exoticism and 40 2
“Otherness,” along with the ingredient of glamour to invite and entice 3
viewers and consumers. In this way, some of the ideological constructs 4
of colonial domination have become so naturalized that we hardly notice 5
them. In the tourist industry, images of exoticized women and children in 6
traditional garb are used to encourage travel through tourist brochures, 7
posters, and TV campaigns. With submissive smiles and half-hidden faces 8
these images, echoing those discussed by Alloula, continue to construct 9
the East as the submissive female and the West as the authoritative male 10
(see page 854). The non-European world is represented as a playground 11
for the West. The bombardment of these images denies the reality of 12
resourcefulness and intense physical work which actually constitutes most 13
women’s lives in the Third World. In the 1970s, Paul Wombell commented 14
on this construct in a photomontage, which contrasted the fantasy tourist 15
world with the reality for many Asian women workers in Britain. In many 16
tourist advertisements, the image of work is so glamorized that we cannot 17
perceive the reality. 18
The dominant photographic language of the tourist brochure has also 41 19
affected how tourists construct their own photographs. These snapshots 20
tend to reinforce the constructed and commodified experience of travel: 21
what is photographed is that which is different and out of the ordinary. 22
Most tourist snapshots also use a vocabulary of photographic practice 23
which is embedded in power relations. Let us look at the photographs by 24
Western tourists in the non-Western world. Tourism within Europe pro- 25
duces a slightly different set of relations. In the non-Western world, the 26
majority of tourists who travel abroad are Western. Automatically a rela- 27
tionship of economic power is established, both generally and in terms of 28
camera ownership. 29
While Don Slater (1983) has discussed the contradictory way in which 42 30
the expansion of camera ownership has not led to new or challenging pho- 31
tographic practices in the non-Western world, this contradiction between 32
ownership and practice is less evident. Tourists, having already consumed 33
an array of exotic and glamorized photographs of the place before arrival, 34
search out these very images and sites to visit and photograph in order 35
to feel that their trip is complete. While many of the experiences revolve 36
around architectural monuments, the desire to consume exotic/anthro- 37
pological images of people has found a new trade, which has its parallel 38
in the earlier studio-anthropological photography. In many tourist loca- 39
tions — in India, Morocco, and Algeria, for e xample — men and women sit 40
in elaborate garb which the tourist can recognize as traditional and, more 41
importantly, exotic. These people wait for those willing to pay to have their 42
photograph taken with them. Tourism creates its own culture for con- 43
sumption. Just like the model in the studio, he or she is also paid by the 44
photographer to conform to an image which has already been constructed. 45 S
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31 playground for the “West.”
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34 Alternatively, at other sites, the tourist can dress up as part of the exotic
35 experience, and photograph themselves (see page 855). The trade in these
36 new “anthropological” images may have expanded to include the unknown
37 snapshooter, but their purpose is not to encourage an understanding of
38 a culture, but rather to commodify and consume yet another aspect of a
39 place through the photographic image — the p eople.
40
41 Fashion
42 In fashion photography the consumption of “Other” worlds is domesti- 43
43 cated through the familiar context of the fashion magazine and the more-
44 often-than-not white model. In some cases it is hard to know where one
S 45 genre ends and the other begins. Within fashion, the ordinary is made
R 46 to appear extraordinary, and vice versa. Fashion photography, as I have
L 47 already mentioned, is blatantly concerned with the constructed photo-
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Tourist Photograph. This photograph was taken in a carpet shop where tourists 30
could dress up and role-play in a mock Bedouin tent. 31
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graph. It is also concerned with what is exotic, dramatic, glamorous, and 34
different. Therefore, it is easy to see how some photographers have moved 35
between areas of anthropological and fashion photography. Irving Penn’s 36
Worlds in a Small Room are a series of constructed images of peoples 37
from around the world, whom Penn photographed while on assignments 38
for Vogue (Penn 1974). In these images the genres of fashion and visual 39
anthropology seem to collapse. The images tell us little about the p
eople, 40
but say a lot about Penn’s construction of these p eople as primitive and 41
exotic. As with the fashion shoot, these images are contrived and stylized, 42
and Penn is at pains to find what is extraordinary and to create the dra- 43
matic. The isolated space of the studio removes the subjects from their 44
own time and space, in a similar way to the French colonial postcards dis- 45 S
cussed above, and gives the photographer free rein to create every aspect 46 R
of the image. Interestingly, Penn described this studio space as “a sort of 47 L
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Arabia Behind the Veil (British Marie Claire, September 1988)
34
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36 neutral area” (Penn 1974: 9). Yet, as we look through his book and peruse
37 the photographs of Penn constructing his shots, the unequal relationship
38 of power makes a mockery of the notion of neutrality.
39 The latent relationship between fashion and popular anthropologi- 44
40 cal photography explains why the fashion magazine Marie Claire could
41 include articles about ethnography without losing the tone of the fashion
42 magazine. In their first issue, the a
rticle “Arabia Behind the Veil” repre-
43 sented the jewellery and make-up of Arab women in a series of plates, like
44 fashion ideas (see above and opposite). If we look closely at the images it is
S 45 clear that the photographer has used just two or three models and dressed
R 46 them differently to represent a series of styles, just like a fashion shoot.
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Arabia Behind the Veil — cont’d
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35
In fashion photography we can see the continued use of the “harem” 45 36
image, for e xample, as the site of colonial fantasy and as being oppositional 37
to the white “norm.” In the November 1988 issue of Company magazine, 38
a fashion spread titled “Arabesque: Rock the Casbah — This is Evening 39
Wear to Smoulder in” features nonwhite women in brocaded clothes, sit- 40
ting and lying indoors on heavily ornamented fabrics, while pining over 41
black and white photographs of men. The photographs of the women are 42
bathed in an orangey, rich light. By contrasting color and black and white 43
photography, the men seem to appear more distant and further unobtain- 44
able. The representation of sexuality here is of an unhealthy obsession. In 45 S
contrast, the fashion spread following it, “Cold Comfort,” features a white 46 R
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1 c ouple together, in a relationship of relative equality. Blue and brown pre-

2 dominate, in contrast to the previous spread, and the much more standard
3 photographic lighting contrasts with the previous yellow haze, to present
4 images which seem much more matter-of-fact, like the denim clothing
5 advertised. Here, however, matter-of-factness acts to represent Europe as
6 rational in opposition to the irrational East.
7 In Marie Claire’s June 1994 issue, another pair of fashion spreads also 46
8 provides an example of the oppositional way in which East and West are
9 presented, not just through content, but also through photographic codes.
10 In “Indian Summer,” the image of an exotic woman in physical and sexual
11 abandon predominates the pages, as in the previous spread and the colo-
12 nial postcards already discussed. The pages of this photo-story are almost
13 like a film sequence with rapid cuts. As in the last “Orientalist” sequence,
14 this woman is alone, but the themes of physical and sexual desire are para-
15 mount. Many of the shots use wide angles to enhance their depth and,
16 along with rich oranges and blues, it gives the sequence a heightened sense
17 of physicality. The spread which follows this, entitled “The Golden Age of
18 Hollywood,” contrasts by representing white men and women together, in
19 relative harmony. This sequence is much more about glamour than “Cold
20 Comfort,” yet here again the notion of rationality is also encouraged by the
21 style of clothing as well as the standard photographic lens used. There is
22 also an almost colonial feel to this fashion spread, through the sepia tones
23 of the photographs and the 1930s styling. The other important differ-
24 ence between the two fashion spreads is that, while the latter concentrates
25 on the clothing, the former concentrates on atmosphere. The context of
26 these images within the fashion magazine leaves the predominantly white
27 women as the surveyors of “Other” women.
28 While I have discussed the use of colonial and exotic photographic 47
29 messages in tourist and fashion photography separately, within the recent
30 dominance of lifestyle culture there is little difference between these
31 forms. Sisley’s photo “magazine” from Spring/Summer 1990 makes this
32 clear. The subject of this fashion label’s photo magazine was a Moroccan
33 caravan tour. Along with the series of travel photographs of a European
34 man and woman, presumably in Sisley clothes, is the male traveller’s diary.
35 There is no written information on the clothes, and they are clearly not
36 the main subject of the photographs, which concentrate on building up an
37 atmosphere of unhindered travel. It is not just the fashion advertiser that
38 has manipulated “the exotic” into a lifestyle and a fashion statement. Fash-
39 ion magazines such as Elle and Vogue have done the same. Elle’s fashion
40 spread from November 1987 entitled “Weave a Winter’s Tale of Fashion’s
41 Bright New Folklore” was shot in Peru, and combines photographs of the
42 season’s clothes with tourist brochure images (see page 859). The main
43 text is of a travel diary, with a subtext of photo titles that combine tourist
44 descriptions and clothing details that include prices. Here, Peru is turned
S 45 into the flavor of the month for fashion influence and tourism, which are
R 46 not distinguished between in layout and photographic format. In a similar
L 47 vein, Vogue focused on Egypt in their May 1989 issue.
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Tourism and fashion marketing collide in this feature. (British Elle, November 36
1987). 37
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Images and photographs for both these magazines are the key to their 48 40
commercial success. Here, there is also no distinct line between the adver- 41
tisement and editorial photograph. What is clear, however, is the domi- 42
nance of commercial interest in all these photographic images, which are 43
contrived and stylized and are “positioned on a threshold between two 44
worlds: the consumer public and a mythic elite created in the utopia of 45 S
the photograph as well as in the reality of a social group maintained by the 46 R
fashion industry” (Brooks 1992: 18–19). 47 L
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1 The Context of the Image

2
3 Don Slater has criticized the semiotic critique of advertisements (charac- 49
4 terized by writers such as Roland Barthes and Judith Williamson) for tak-
5 ing as assumed precisely what needs to be explained — “the relations and
6 practices within which discourses are formed and operated” (Slater 1983:
7 258). Barthes’ and Williamson’s readings of advertisements have only pro-
8 vided a very limited social and historical context. Often even simple pieces
9 of information, such as the magazine from which the images have been
10 extracted and the date of advertisements, have not been mentioned. Liz
11 Wells has commented on some of the limitations of Decoding Advertise
12 ments, especially Williamson’s lack of consideration of multiple readings
13 (Wells 1992).
14 While scholars have devoted some space to the understanding of a 50
15 broad cultural context, the exploration of political and economic contexts
16 is more rare. The vast array of commercial messages has also made their
17 contextualization increasingly difficult. It would be impossible to contex-
18 tualize them all. Information about processes of production are not always
19 easily available, and this increases the reality of consumption over that of
20 production:
21
22 What commodities fail to communicate to consumers is information about
23 the process of production. Unlike goods in earlier societies, they do not bear
24 the signature of their makers, whose motives and actions we might access
because we knew who they were. . . . The real and full meaning of production
25
is hidden beneath the empty appearance in exchange. Only once the real
26
meaning has been systematically emptied out of commodities does adver
27 tising then refill this void with its own symbols. Production empties. Adver
28 tising fills. The real is hidden by the imaginary.
29 — Jhally 1990: 50
30
31 To decode photographs and advertising images more effectively, it is essen-
32 tial for us to understand their context. Let us take, for example, William-
33 son’s reading of the Lancia car advertisement (1979). Would a discussion
34 of Lancia manufacturing and car production in the late 1970s reveal more
35 about the image?
36 Since the founding of the Lancia firm in 1907, Lancia had been known 51
37 for their production of quality cars for g entlemen, as one writer described
38 it. With increasing conglomeration in all industries throughout the twen-
39 tieth century, Lancia, as a family firm, ran into trouble and was eventually
40 taken over by Fiat in 1969 (Weernink 1979). The Beta saloon was the first
41 car to be produced by Lancia after the merger. First, which was known
42 for producing smaller, cheaper cars, needed to distinguish the Beta from
43 its own cars. Style and quality needed to be suggested, and “Lancia — the
44 Most Italian Car” was the slogan used to enhance the sense of stylishness
S 45 of the Lancia range generally. It is this slogan which has been visualised
R 46 in the 1979 advertisement discussed by Williamson.
L 47
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Apart from asserting a sense of style and quality, why has Lancia cho- 52 1
sen to represent any form of labor relations in the advertisement? Most 2
car advertisements of this period tended to talk about the car itself and 3
its features — for example, its economical use of petrol or the size of its 4
boot. This advertisement does not discuss the car’s actual features at all. In 5
the late 1970s strikes took place in many major industries in Britain and 6
Europe. In September 1978, for e xample, the Ford car workers at Dagen- 7
ham went on strike for nine weeks. Car manufacturers generally must 8
have wanted to maintain an image of good industrial relations. The illu- 9
sion of the contented happy peasant worker in the vineyards depicted by 10
the ad discussed earlier glosses over the general unrest that was present 11
during this period. Finally, the image of the peasant worker could carry 12
another function. During the mid-1970s, the car industry began to intro- 13
duce microprocessors into production for increased automation. The 14
peasant workers depicted in the ad, outside of industrial production, also 15
acted to represent Lancia has a quality “hand-crafted,” “gentleman’s” car. 16
17
Image Worlds 18
Let us look at an example of marketing photography, where an understand- 53 19
ing of the context within which images are produced helps us to perceive 20
the extent to which commercial interests affect photographic practice. 21
David Nye, in Image Words, gives us a detailed exploration of the context 22
of production, dissemination, and historical setting of General Electric’s 23
photographs between 1900 and 1930 (Nye 1985). As Nye notes, commer- 24
cial photographers do not strive for uniqueness (as does the artist pho- 25
tographer), but rather for a solidity of a predictable character. In spite of 26
their documentary appearance, Nye notes the contrast between the images 27
produced by a socially concerned documentary photographer and a com- 28
mercial photographer, even when the subject is the same. He compares 29
two photographs of Southern textile mills, one by Lewis Hine, the other 30
by a photographer working for General Electric. While Hine emphasises 31
the people and children in the mills who work in potentially dangerous 32
environments, the commercial photographer’s image stresses machinery, 33
electrification, and technical progress (Nye 1985: 55–56). 34
Nye also notes how, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the man- 54 35
agement of General Electric discovered the need to address four distinct 36
groups — engineers, blue collar workers, managers, and consumers. Their 37
desire to say different things to different groups affected the production of 38
images for the company’s various publications. While the General Electric 39
Review (a company-sponsored scientific journal) used photographs which 40
emphasized the machines, the publications for workers employed images 41
which concentrated on the idea of the corporation as community. 42
Nye not only notes the varying sorts of photographs for different pub- 55 43
lications, but also the changing production of images over time. While 44
images from 1880 to 1910 expressed a sense of relationship between work- 45 S
ers and managers (they were often photographed together), images after 46 R
47 L
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32 Schenectady Works News General Electric (2 November 1923). Images which
33 represented individual workers engrossed in a piece of interesting work domi-
34 nated the cover of Works News during the 1920s. It did not represent the reality
35 for most workers, but presented images which gave a certain dignity and
36 harmony during a period fraught with conflicts.
37
38
39 this date present a picture of a workforce which was much more highly
40 controlled by management. Nye details how by the 1920s General Elec-
41 tric had 82,000 workers in their employment, in contrast to 6,000 in 1885.
42 The burgeoning workforce made management’s role more important, and
43 the artisanal skills of the previous era had also all but disappeared. Labor
44 unrest began to increase during the 1910s. In 1917, partly in response to
S 45 these conflicts, General Electric began to publish a magazine called Works
R 46 News which was distributed to all blue collar workers twice a month. The
L 47 paper did not address the general workforce, but was tailored to each site.
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The covers of the magazine produced a new kind of photographic image 1

not previously used by the company. They featured individual skilled work- 2
ers photographed from head to toe and engrossed in a piece of interesting 3
work. This kind of image was repeated on the cover of nearly every issue 4
of Works News (see page 862), and did not represent the reality for most of 5
General Electric’s employees; but, since these workers were individualized 6
and isolated, the generalization was only implicit. These kinds of images 7
hardly existed inside the magazine, which concentrated instead on the 8
workers — as a community which went on holiday, played in sports teams, 9
and participated in other forms of recreation. The style of the cover photo- 10
graphs had a history in Lewis Hine’s work a decade earlier. He had aimed 11
to represent and give dignity to “real men” in difficult work. In adopting 12
this style, the General Electric photographers were simply using it as a 13
representational strategy to define the image world of the General Electric 14
plant. It is only through an appreciation of the context of the image that 15
we can understand the intent in the production of images by Hine and the 16
General Electric photographer as different, and can therefore appreciate 17
the different meanings of the image. The production of meaning is a pro- 18
cess: As Marx noted in Grundrisse: 19
20
It is not only the object that production creates for consumption . . . [It] also
gives consumption its precise nature, its character, its finish. . . . Hunger is 21
hunger, but the hunger that is satisfied by cooked meat eaten with a knife and 22
fork is a different hunger from that which bolts down raw meat with the aid 23
of hand nail and tooth. Production thus produces not only the object but also 24
the manner of consumption, not only objectively but also subjectively. 25
— Marx quoted in Slater 1983: 247 26
27
notes 28
1. As stated in anti-Apartheid campaign literature of the time. 29
30
31
bibliography
32
Key Texts 33
Alloula, Malek (1987) The Colonial Harem, Manchester: Manchester University Press. 34
Back, L. and Quaade, V. (1993) “Dream Utopias, Nightmare Realities: Imagining 35
Race and Culture within the World of Benetton,” Third Text 22. 36
Barthes, Roland (1977a) “The Rhetoric of the Image” in Image, Music, Text, Lon- 37
don: Fontana. 38
Berger, John (1972a) Ways of Seeing, London: BBC. 39
Brooks, Rosetta (1992) “Fashion Photography” in J. Ash and E. Wilson (eds.) Chic 40
Thrills: A Fashion Reader, London: Pandora.
41
Craik, Jennifer (1994) “Soft Focus: Techniques of Fashion Photography” in The
42
Face of Fashion, London: Routledge.
Evans, C. and Thornton, M. (1989) Women and Fashion: A New Look, London: 43
Quartet. 44
Goldman, Robert (1992) Reading Ads Socially, London: Routledge. 45 S
Myers, Kathy (1990) “Selling Green” in C. Squiers (ed.) The Critical Image: Essays 46 R
on Contemporary Photography, Seattle: Bay Press. 47 L
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1 Nye, David (1985) Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric 1890–1930,
2 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
3 Slater, Don (1983) “Marketing Mass Photography” in P. Davis and H. Walton (eds.)
4 Language, Image, Media, Oxford: Blackwell.
Squiers, Carol (1992) “The Corporate Year in Pictures” in R. Bolton (ed.) The Con
5
test of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
6
Stein, Sally (1981) “The Composite Photographic Image and the Composition of
7 Consumer Ideology,” Art Journal, Spring 1981.
8 Tagg, John (1988) “A Democracy of the Image: Photographic Portraiture and Com-
9 modity Production” in The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies
10 and Histories, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
11 Williamson, Judith (1978) Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Adver
12 tising, London: Marion Boyars.
13 ——— (1979) “Great History that Photographs Mislaid” in Photography Workshop
14 (ed.) Photography/Politics One, London: Comedia.
15 Winship, Janice (1987a) “Handling Sex” in R. Betterton (ed.) Looking On: Images of
Femininity in the Visual Arts and Media, London: Pandora.
16
17 Other References
18 Bacher, Fred (1992) “The Popular Condition: Fear and Clothing in LA,” The Human
19 ist, September/October.
20 Bailey, David (1988) “Re-thinking Black Representations” Ten/8 31.
21 ——— (1989) “People of the World” in P. Wombell (ed.) The Globe: Representing the
22 World, York, Impressions Gallery.
23 Baker, Lindsay (1991) “Taking Advertising to its Limit,” Times 22 July, p. 29.
24 Barthes, Roland (1977b) “The Photographic Message” in S. Heath (ed.) Image,
Music, Text, London: Fontana.
25
Bate, David (1993) “Photography and the Colonial Vision,” Third Text 22.
26
Belussi, Fiorenza (1987) Benetton: Information Technology in Production and Dis
27 tribution: A Case Study of the Innovative Potential of Traditional Sectors, SPRU,
28 University of Sussex.
29 Benetton (1993) Global Vision: Untied Colors of Benetton, Tokyo: Robundo.
30 Benson, S. H. (nd) Some Examples of Benson Advertising. S. H. Benson Firm.
31 Berger, John (1972b) “The Political Uses of Photomontage” in Selected Essays and
32 Articles, the Look of Things, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
33 Devlin, Polly (1979) Vogue Book of Fashion Photography, London: Conde Nast.
34 Edwards, Elizabeth (ed.) (1992) Anthropology and Photography 7860–7920, New
35 Haven: Yale University Press.
Edwards, Steve (1989) “The Snapshooters of History,” Ten/8 32.
36
Ewing, William (1991) “Perfect Surface” in The Idealizing Vision: The Art of Fashion
37
Photography, New York: Aperture.
38 Freedman, Jim (1990) “Bringing it all Back Home: A Commentary on Into the
39 Heart of Africa,” Museum Quarterly, February.
40 Goffman, Erving (1979) Gender Advertisements, London: Macmillan.
41 Graham, Judith (1989) “Benetton ‘Colors’ the Race Issue” Advertising Age.
42 Gupta, Sunil (1986) “Northern Media, Southern Lives” in Photography Workshop
43 (ed.) Photography/Politics: Two, London: Comedia.
44 Hall, Stuart (1993) “Encoding/Decoding” in S. Durring (ed.) The Cultural Studies
S 45 Reader, London: Routledge (first published in 1980).
R 46 Harrison, Martin (1991) Appearances: Fashion Photography Since 1945, London:
V & A.
L 47
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rosen virtual friendship and the new narcissism 865
Jhally, Sut (1990) Codes of Advertising, London: Routledge. 1

Leiss, W., Kline, S., and Jhally, S. (1986) Social Communication in Advertising, 2
Toronto: Methuen. 3
Mayle, Peter (1983) Thirsty Work: Ten Years of Heineken Advertising. London: 4
Macmillan.
5
Mitter, Swasti (1986) “Flexibility and Control: The Case of Benetton” in Common
6
Fate Common Bond; Women in the Global Economy, London: Pluto.
Morris, Roderick C. (1992) “The Best Possible Taste,” Spectator, 15 February.
7
Myers, Kathy (1986) Understains: Sense and Seduction in Advertising, London: 8
Comedia. 9
Penn, Irving (1974) Worlds in a Small Room, London: Studio Vista. 10
Phizacklea, Annie (1990) “The Benetton Model” in Unpackaging the Fashion Indus 11
try: Gender, Racism and Class in Production, London: Routledge. 12
Pollock, Griselda (1990) “Missing Women — Re-Thinking Early Thoughts on Images 13
of Women” in C. Squiers (ed.) The Critical Image: Essays on Contemporary Pho 14
tography, Seattle: Bay Press. 15
Posner, Jill (1982) Spray it Loud, London: Routledge.
16
Prochaska, David (1991) “Fantasia of the Phototheque: French Postcard Views of
17
Senegal,” African Arts, October.
Richards, Thomas (1990) Commodity Culture in Victorian Britain, London: Verso.
18
Said, Edward (1985) Orientalism, London: Penguin (first published in 1978). 19
Savan, Leslie (1990) “Logo-rrhea,” voice, 24 November, New York. 20
Schildkrout, Enid (1991) “The Spectacle of Africa Through the Lens of Herbert 21
Lang,” African Arts, October. 22
Sontag, Susan (1979) On Photography, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 23
Stein, Sally (1992) “The Graphic Ordering of Desire: Modernization of a Middle- 24
Class Women’s Magazine 1919–1939” in R. Bolton (ed.) The Contest of Mean 25
ing: Critical Histories of Photography, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 26
Ten/8 16 “Black Image — Staying On.”
27
Ten/8 2(3) “Critical Decade — Black British Photography in the ’80s.”
28
Weernink, Wim (1979) La Lancia: 70 Years of Excellence, London: Motor Racing
Publications.
29
Wells, Liz (1992) “Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements” in Reading into 30
Cultural Studies, London: Routledge. 31
Williams, Raymond (1980) “Advertising the Magic System” in Problems in Material 32
ism and Culture, London: Verso. 33
Winship, Janice (1987b) Inside Women’s Magazines, London: Pandora. 34
35
36
37
Christine Rosen
38
Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism 39
40
Christine Rosen currently works as a senior editor of the New Atlantis: A 41
Journal of Technology & Society, which published “Virtual Friendship and 42
the New Narcissism” in 2007. Rosen’s article likens contemporary social 43
networking profiles to the portraiture of previous eras. Both types of por- 44
trait mark the subject’s status. However, users of social networks, who rep- 45 S
resent an increasing segment of the U.S. population, also convey status by
46 R
collecting, displaying, and managing friends. Rosen questions the effects
47 L
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Anandi Ramamurthy's "Constructions of Illusion: Photography and Commodity Culture"

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834 readings for inquiry

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1 Photographs to Represent Commodity Culture

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of usage, including the mundane images in mail-order information and 1

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The Grammar of the Ad 1

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image, since it is not strictly speaking a documentary image at all, but a 1

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1 Concealing Labor Relations

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1 to the fashion photographs of the average mail-order catalogue, which

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the cultured woman, on her travels through Europe in search of adventure. 1

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1 c­ ouple together, in a relationship of relative equality. Blue and brown pre-

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1 The Context of the Image

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The covers of the magazine produced a new kind of photographic image 1

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Jhally, Sut (1990) Codes of Advertising, London: Routledge. 1

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1 c ouple together, in a relationship of relative equality. Blue and brown pre-