"Fashion is never anything but an amnesiac substitution of the present for the

past" Roland Barthes

Fashion, as it is actualized and spoken through the medium of photography,

represents some of the most beautiful and hideous elements of culture and
society. Invariably, fashion photography pictures and proffers standards of
beauty, self and display that, by sheer style and omnipresence, overwhelm
common sense and rational thought. The innate contradictions within fashion
photography and the larger industry it represents burden the form with
criticism. This precarious position fashion photography exists in endangers
the possibility of looking at the form outside a purely non-decorative or
aesthetic framework, and further, problematizes the reconciliation of a place
for its valid study in the academic schema.

This discussion will focus on fashion photography in advertising as a

perspective on the perceptions and presentation of the human form in
modern culture. The inquiry will be based on the examination of three films'
representations of significant periods in fashion photography and a review of
the criticisms of social theorists in regard to the form. The objective here is to
determine whether fashion photography provides insight into the social
context and notions of the self and display and their constructions of gender,
sexual and personal identities.

Fashion photography informs and is informed by social context in perception

and presentation of the human form, especially the female form. By using
three films representing the world and system of fashion photography in
three different periods, I will consider the importance of this photographic
genre by asserting its place in socio-cultural discourse as it addresses and
questioning notions of self and display and the constructions of gender,
sexual and social identities. Each film encapsulates the essence of its period
by reflecting the current values and standards of society and fashion through
a visual medium. Film and photography are two visual means of mass
dissemination, particularly relevant for fashion images. Their combination,
resulting in fashion photography in filmic narratives, presents the viewer with
significant cultural insight as it refers to the fashion arena. These films
simultaneously speak a reality and a misrepresentation of reality, in that they
report the actualities of their time while participating in the continued
perpetuation of a more general sense of illusion inherent in fashion

photography.

By performing close readings of these texts and images, it is possible to

develop a greater understanding of why fashion photography used to be
highly relevant, revolutionary and respectable form and speculate about the
reasons why this may no longer be the case. To take some of the most
talented photographers of the genre from previous years and pit them
against the majority of contemporary fashion photographers may appear
extreme and one-sided, but the chasm between the two groups serves only
to more fully reveal the progression of decay and regression of creativity in
the more recent years. There has yet to be another photographer of the
caliber of those selected to examine in this paper.

In engaging with the films, as well as the work of several theorists in cultural
studies and adjacent areas, I offer a perspective that expands and
rejuvenates rather than narrows and further colors peoples' understanding of
and negative opinions about fashion photography. Through comprehensive
readings of three films, one from each era, I intend to demonstrate how each
film functions as an advertisement for its period, in its aesthetic, historical
and cultural sensibilities. Additionally, I will examine the evolution of the
persona of the fashion photographer and his relationship to all elements and
facets of the form as this character is manifested in the films. The figure of
the fashion photographer also assumes the responsibility of continuously
generating what constitutes the fashionable image' at given historical
moments. As Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson assert in Fashion
Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, the photographer memorializes
notions and conceptions of beauty (4). Finally, I will explore how the audience
is constructed for each film, for which the gaze has been catered to and
designed for viewing and how the characters are seen onscreen.

I have chosen Funny Face (1956), Blowup (1966) and Eyes of Laura Mars
(1978) as representative texts for their uncanny sense of historicity in regard
to their adjoining real fashion climates. These films are not timeless; while
they are still referenced and relevant today, they are almost totally nuanced
to their era. Each text recreates the individual realities of their fashion worlds.
I offer these films as advanced case studies, visual texts that openly
communicate the historical trends, sensibilities and theoretical elements of
discourse about fashion photography in each context.

My project for this paper, in addition to providing a solid background for each
of the aforementioned periods and their complementary films, is to examine
the origins of actions of appropriation that have surfaced in more
contemporary work, and their implications and impact. I also plan to
investigate the evolution of fashion photography aesthetics in conjunction
with the shifting structuring of the gazethe interplay between spectator and
spectacle. When, where and how did this come about? What led to the
cessation of creation and the instigation of mimicry? The question at hand is
how can contemporary fashion photography remain autonomous and novel in
the age of appropriation and pastiche, and, in the commercial age, do these
things even matter anymore?

Fashion photography, in the form of presenting garments on and off bodies

and the system in which these images circulate and operate, has long been
on tenuous ground in both the public and academic spheres. While the public
may continue to be critical of the idea of such photography and the idea of
fashion in generalits triviality, wastefulness, impermanence and
commercialism, many people still buy the clothes and keep up with the
trends. Attempts to legitimize the topic of fashion and its depiction as a
subject as an area warranting serious academic consideration and
examination however, have proved more difficult. Although these attempts
have been increasingly frequent as the role of fashion has become
increasingly more evident and influential and its dialogue more social in its
mainstream prevalence, the general consensus is still to view fashion and its
related institutions in a largely negative manner and its presentation
unworthy of consideration beyond a superficial level. Proponents and creators
of fashion photography have strained to garner respect for their form as well
as maintain an appearance of continuous innovation and a sense of
progressive modernity' through each season.

Popularizing and giving credence to an academic discussion of fashion

photography and advertising is a daunting task given the widespread and
long-standing bias against these forms of popular culture, often associated
with frivolity, wastefulness and decadence. Attempting to situate these media
in a respectable position is doubly hindered by prejudices against elements of
both areas. Fashion has been a traditionally and frequently dismissed,
criticized or mocked industry, practice and preoccupation. Joanne Entwistle
comments on this sentiment in her book, The Fashioned Body, acknowledging
the widely-held beliefs that fashion is, among other things, vain, elitist, and
wasteful (53). Julian Rodriguez further attests to the difficulties of
approaching the topic in the essay "Fashion's Fantasy." "Fashion,'

Photography,' or History'you are entering a minefield with these subjects,

so writing in a subject which ties them together has to be fraught with
problems" (49). With these kind of negative preconceptions implanted in the
present public and scholarly minds, altering conceptions of fashion
photography is no easy exercise.

Fashion's apparent wastefulness also impairs modern scholars' ability to

elevate the status of the form. The nature of fashion and fashion photography
to be impermanent, its latent transience in ever changing and shifting trends,
generates and exudes a perpetual in-process' quality. This quality is
delusory however, as images and styles repeat themselves in carefully
calculated and timed increments. Joanne Finkelstein suggests in her book,
Fashion: An Introduction,

The apparent instantaneousness of fashion lends it an attractive volatility.

Fashion is really about maintaining the eternal sameness, preserving the
status quo; it is a quixotic gesture, a con trick, a sleight of hand, which makes
us think that change is happening when the opposite is closer to the truth
Fashions are not about putting into circulation the really new, because the
genuine novelty cannot be absorbed quickly into the cultural formations of
everyday life. (5)

The form has to preserve a palatable character to remain commercially viable

on a mass scale. The author continues, "Fashionin its various guises as a
practice, an industry and a social forceprovides so such opportunity for a
full engagement with the new. Fashions are being continuously recycled, and
new marketing strategies are constantly being tried out to maintain this
impetus" (Ibid.). Fissures in this illusion of constant innovation and flux have
become apparent though.

Like fashion, photography and advertising have their own less than esteemed
opinions and interpretations by cultural critics. Advertising is a regularly
demonized entity, and photography, as an art form, is still struggling to be
recognized and validated, with prolific public debates on the topic tracing
back to at least the 1970s. Hilary Radner makes a particularly damaging
claim against fashion photography as a viable art form in the essay "On the
Move: Fashion Photography and the Single Girl in the 1960s." "Unlike art,'
fashion photography obviously functions primarily within a marketplace that

serves to sell clothes. Only belatedly does fashion photography sell itself as
art, almost as an afterthought" (131). The author recognizes and emphasizes
its commercial character, which is undeniable, and yet certain photographers
insist on continual attempts to present fashion photographs as something
more. Rosetta Brookes expands further on this photographic genre and its
lowly perceived position in the essay, "Fashion Photography, The Double Page
Spread: Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin and Deborah Turbeville."

Fashion photography has traditionally been regarded as the lightweight end

of the photographic practice. Its close relationship to an industry dependent
on fast turnover makes the fashion photograph the transitory image par
excellence[The] commercial sphere of photographsthe domain of the
everyday imagerepresents the debasement of a conventional history of
photography. Fashion advertising, in particular, is seen as negating the purity
of the photographic image. We see the typical instead of the unique moment
or event. (17)

Clearly, the conflation of the two terms, fashion and photography, into one
medium is thus rather problematic in regard to the business of solidifying the
position of the form. Beginning by relating fashion's function beyond a simple
decorative gesture bereft of meaning, and fashion photography its equally
empty vessel of expression, to its importance as a means of communication, I
hope to reveal and present the multiple values and complexities often
ignored in popular discourse. Fashion photographs in advertising, with their
capacity to communicate social ideals, standards and taboos, operate chiefly
to form their consumerson one level, to make them buy products, and on
another level, make them buy the illusion of a lifestyle and possibility for a
new identity by gaining ownership of the featured products.

Fashion periodicals are the primary purveyors of these images and

subsequent identities, with Vogue as the gold standard for magazines in this
arena. Through fashion photography, these publications exhibit and mediate
the ideals of each era. Their role in such activities of dissemination and
influence is problematic and damaging on several levels. Finkelstein
highlights some of these more insidious functions, citing the fashion
magazine's didactic character. With the growing popularity and seductive
appeal of this medium and the apparent innocuous quality assumed by it, of
merely reporting new styles and where to obtain them, the publications' more
subversive edge remains hidden. Fashion magazines do not just present
fashion, "[They] instruct in the creation of image and self representation"

(46). Through these publications, women are able to imagine and construct
the best' and most desirable' versions of themselves. "Fashioning the body
becomes a practice through which the individual can fashion a self" (Ibid. 50).
Whole distinct identities are formed through dress; social perceptions of
wealth, class, taste and personality are mediated by the presentation of the
body. The garment constructs the self, and the individual' captured in
photography memorializes and makes permanent that self.

Fashion advertising has been enormously instrumental in presenting and

perpetuating these largely unattainable images and standards of style.
Atkinson, in essay, "Fashion Photography: A Short Survey," recognizes the
changing role of the photograph. Beginning in the 1950s, photographers and
advertisers alike came to recognize and "[promote] the value of a photograph
on its own' as a very persuasive image for advertising products (304).
Finkelstein expands on the power and influence expressed by advertising in
recognizing the industry's role in the dispersal of the fashionable.
Advertisements give instruction on how pleasures can be pursued and
enjoyed and offer chimerical lifestyles that help to stir up desire in all its
states in the consumer. "[It] destabilizes the practices of the everyday in
order to reinvent them" (46). The routine is upset by style. A particular skirt
length is constructed and presented to be new; in a just matter of inches,
another is pass. Novelty is presented as something that can be bought and
sold and is misleadingly found in the most common of objects and behaviors.

Advertising feeds into the visual pleasures of looking, partaking in images

and encountering the fashionable, the novel, the risky and the sexual. The
presence of such elements provides individuals with a sense of curiosity,
wonder, envy or disgust or a combination of each. Advertising makes
fantastical and elitist imagery available to the common observer; the
privileged private is made public. This new availability has its consequences,
however. The images presented in fashion advertising, with their glossy,
seductive appeal, indoctrinate viewers and implant conceptions of beauty
and self-display in the minds of consumers, whether or not the ideal is
possible for the spectator to achieve. Advertising of this kind is present
everywhere, and has two clear forms in commercial presentation.

The two most notable manifestations of advertising in fashion photography

are specific fashion brand and general editorial images. While there are
discrepancies between pure' fashion photography consisting of editorial
spreads and more commercialized image conception in particular designer

advertisements, both are fundamentally about selling. The editorial spread is,
without a doubt, an ad in its own right, differing only in the increasingly
subtle changes in modes of representation of the garments. Typically,
clothing is more deliberately and clearly displayed in official corporate
advertisements. In editorial spreads, all the viewer may see is the intimation
of a garmenta single strap of a dress obscured by dramatic lighting.
Editorials often attempt to create more depth and meaning by presenting a
narrative flow. And yet, conventions in corporate advertising fashion
photography are changing and assuming similar qualities. Such
advertisements are increasingly becoming either narrative in representation,
with multi-page spreads for the same brand, such as Anne Klein [Fig. 1]), or
not showing the garment at all, and instead relying on the cultural capital
that their name carries by simply presenting the corporate logo, such as
Helmut Lang. Entwistle remarks that Baudrillard once noted, "the thing
consumed is the image, not the commodity" (225). At this point, there has
yet to be a real change in the presentation of garments in editorial spreads,
however. Regardless of the disparities between these two forms, both offer
the gift of access to the fashionable and the fabulous to the average
consumer.

While the exclusivity of haute couture fashion shows as well as the limited
number of those able to afford the items presented there persists, the
prevalence and prominence of photography capturing this realm allows its
reportage and accessibility to a wide audience. Few are offered first row at
Chanel's runway shows, but most anyone can pick up the latest issue of
Vogue. Through fashion photography, access is granted to the general public
and culture is continually renewed and reformed. With the democratic
dispersal of high fashion through such publications, fashion itself retains a
sense of universality. Finkelstein writes, "[It] is made universal through its
ubiquity" (13). Saturation of the market with these elitist images makes high
fashion more homogenous and mainstream; it is vulgarized by accessibility.
Valerie Steel emphasizes the profound role of the media in regulating access
in Fifty Years of Fashion: New Look to Now, "New media and increased fashion
coverage [have] made previously elite fashion accessible to a mass audience,
but only as image, never as object" (97). Through developments in mass
media and subsequent growth in the consumption, popularity and influence
of the form, the pervasive coverage and exposure of fashion to this larger
audience has incurred some repercussions in culture and in individuals'
notions of self and worth.

The formation, expression and conception of the self vary in relation to

historical context. Each period of fashion determines a particular and

seemingly unique aesthetic. These differences manifest significantly more in
certain periods than others. Fashion photography periodizes significantly
during the decades of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Yet, even within this defined
framework, the exact periods are difficult to delineate absolutely. As with any
new mode or style, representation or interpretation, there are aspects and
developments that lead up to a recognizable emergence. No new genre is
spontaneous or immediate. Indeed, the transitional periods between eras are
not so cleanly defined, but a general aesthetic and character of presentation
can be gleaned from each selected time.

In the 1980s, 90s and the contemporary fashion world, trends and
conventions have become far more fractured and de-centered. No singular
feeling or ambiance has emerged for these times; nothing fits easily into a
bound category. There seems to be less and less sincere or honest innovation
and more and more desperate envelope pushing, as can be witnessed in
contemporary fashion photography and in the fashion themselves. This drive
and rush to shock and break ground are flagrantly overcompensatory
gestures that deny a sense of validity for fashion today. For an industry and
art form already on tenuous ground, these flailings for meaning increase the
transparency of the enterprise and continue to compromise fashion's quest
for validation beyond a mere trivial aesthetic in both social and academic
discourse.

The decades of the 1950s, 60s and 70s may be regarded as the most
profoundly transitional periods in fashion photography, and thus, in fashion
culture at large. For each era, a new ideal of feminine beauty was
constructed, introduced and marketed to the public. In the mid to late 1950s,
this model woman was loosed into the outdoors, beyond the previously
conventional passive and restrictive posturing. The new figure of
fashionability in the 1960s was granted greater independence and realized
sexual identity with increased activity and dynamism. In the 1970s, the ideal
was less clearly defined, although this woman' possessed the quality of cool,
alien detachment, an overt sexuality and implicit violence. Diana Crane
recognizes these periods of transition in fashion photography, specifically in
the landmark fashion publication, Vogue, in her book, Fashion and Its Social
Agendas. Highlighting the sometimes subtle and sometimes overt changes in
certain aspects of the magazine's fashion photography, she tracks this
process of evolution. Crane notes that by 1957, models were often
photographed looking directly at the camera, indicating their inferior status
through expressions of vulnerability rather than defiance. During this time,

the major focus of the photographs remained the clothing. A decade later,
the magazine was showing close-ups of models in bathing suits and there
was an increasing emphasis on their youthfulness.

The supermodel rather than the society woman was becoming the role
model. By 1977Both advertisements and editorial pages appeared to be
oriented toward a male gaze. Men were more likely to be included in the
photographs, along with pairs or groups of women. Models generally looked
directly at the camera and often assumed childlike or contorted positions.
Most photographs were not contextualized. The vantagepoint of the camera
was less likely to be at eye level and more likely to be looking down or
looking up at its subject. (Ibid. 211)

The expressions and postures of the models from these periods clearly reflect
Crane's observations about Vogue classifications. What is more, these
qualities of presentation transfer to film.

In Funny Face, Audrey Hepburn peers demurely at the camera, her body well
covered, the camera focusing predominantly on her clothing. Her real world
colleagues,' Suzy Parker and Dorian Leigh, for example, are pictured the
same way in their photographic images. The overt and vampy sexiness of the
model Verushka is unmistakably illustrated in the shoots constructed for
Blowup and her real fashion work. In the images of working photographers
from the 60s such as Brian Duffy, the models are similarly presented
scantily clad and pushing at the limits of propriety. The models in Eyes of
Laura Mars are dually erotic and violent in their photographic renderings.
They closely mirror the visual qualities of Helmut Newton's photographed
women. In addition to outlining the shifts in the presentations, and
subsequently, the conceptions of femininity, Crane also introduces the notion
of the gaze and the act of gazing at the photographic subject, a topic of
continuous examination and debate.

Several theoretical constructs from the past century are useful in helping to
recognize and give meaning to the language and influence of fashion
photography within a social framework. The gaze, and as its related social
constructs, the homospectatorial position and the construction of femininity
as represented through photographic images; members of the Frankfurt
School insights on commodification and mass reproduction of images;

semiotics and elements of postmodernism are all relevant in examining

fashion photography's greater influence on and purpose in the social and
academic schema. Addressing these intellectual positions are scholars
ranging from post-structuralist, semiotician Barthes to postmodern theorist
Baudrillard and feminist Fuss to linguist Foucault. The viability of fashion, with
the form of fashion photography in particular, is best revealed and
understood within the framework of cultural studies.
One of the most instrumental conceptions in understanding the role and
reflection of fashion photography in and on society is that of the gaze. With
her insight on transitional difference in styles of photography in Vogue from
the 1950s to the 1970s, Crane introduces this concept in relation to the
camera's point of view. In spite of the differences between each period, the
structure and direction of the gaze remained the same, reinforcing traditional
roles and expectations as denoted by sex.

The gaze has long been a subject in and of cultural discourse, especially in
art. The act of gazing, the relation between object and spectator within the
context of an image is, ultimately involuntary and inevitable. One party is
presented, while the other observes. The spectator is able to derive his or her
own meanings from what is being displayed, while the observed party
remains passive and vulnerable.

The medium of fashion photography is one area where the gaze is paramount
in considering the construction, contextualization and presentation of
subjects in photographs. Images of bodies, regardless of gender, assume a
male spectator and thus, cater to the male gaze; the history of this practice is
deeply embedded, even in contemporary photography. Even in fashion
photography, where the viewer is often presumably female and advertisers
are targeting that demographic, the images' construction still forces the
female spectator to assume a male mindset of spectating when viewing such
work. John Berger, in his seminal text exploring the interactivity of images
and language, Ways of Seeing, explains this construction.

A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually

accompanied by her own image of herselfWomen look at women. Women
watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations
between man and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The
surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns
herself into an objectand most particularly an object of vision: a sight. (46,

47)

The women in fashion photographs as well as the viewers of these images,

engage in the same process. Photographs of this homoeroticized nature are
participating in the creation of what theorist Diana Fuss calls the
homospectatorial position' (Finkelstein 21). The position assumed under this
terminology is constructed by the typical features of fashion photography
that caters to women and relates to "the spectatorial relation established
between the female image and the female viewer." Opposing the "embedded
misogyny" theory, Fuss argues "that contemporary fashion photography
tacitly produces a particular gaze or way of seeing which, although it
regulates homosexual desire, also gives it opportunities for expression"
(Ibid.). In fashion advertising, women are forced to look at other women being
presented in an often highly eroticized manner. In order to sell the clothes
most effectively, the garments and the wearers of those garments must
appear attractive to the observing consumer. In short, the woman must be
attracted to what she sees, even if it is in conflict with her true sexual desire
or preference.

These theories are more progressive and seemingly redemptive in validating

the form as they add a new kind of dimensionality to it and are thus, not so
widely subscribed to. The viewpoint that fashion photographs regulate and
stimulate some kind of female sensual desire is countered by Bruzzi and
Gibson's assertion that, "the fashionable image is not created for sexual
titillation" (3). Instead of mere erotic attraction to and interaction with the
work, "[Such viewing] is seen as part of a complex process involving selfexpression, same-sex rituals and the non-erotic, non-judgmental pleasures of
dressing up and looking at the different dress codes of others" (Ibid.). Bruzzi
and Gibson's position works in the one sense that regardless of what gender
women are attracted to, women commonly dress more for other women than
they do for men. The uncomfortable visual exchange between object and
subject possesses elements of a distanced yet seductive nature.

This purely non-sexual yet fetishizing and coveting of women of the aesthetic
modes of other women argument seems difficult to substantiate, as emphasis
is increasingly placed on the body, emphasis equal to or even greater than
the garments resting on it. Indeed, in the beginnings of serious and focused
fashion photography in the 1930s, the clothes were the paramount
concentration. The body was de-emphasized. The pictured models did not
assert any kind of independence; the clothes that covered them subsumed

their bodies. Their corporeal nature was rendered abstract or denied outright
(Radner 133). Emphasis on the garment over the body continued until the
early 1950s. As the importance of the display of the model increased, shifts in
presentation became more apparent. From the late 50s on, the body became
the focus and existed in state of constant display.

Fashion publications such as Vogue were instrumental in creating this new

exposure and mode of visual consumption. Further, they served to open a
new perspective with an intended female audience and readership. The
magazines sold a certain self, one changing over time, that they constructed
to attract and compel women to fashion themselves after. Vogue and other
women's fashion magazines were the first medium to present images of
women for the consumption of women, rather than men, and this kind of
exchange granted a more democratic and empowered structure for female
readers to exist in. Radner writes, "The women depicted in the photographs
who after all represented their readersbegan to be cast in active as
opposed to the passive roles traditionally assigned to them in art" (130). And
so, at some level, at least in the early representations of fashion magazine
images, such publications were not entirely destructive in their influence.
However, this early characteristic of fashion photography coming into vogue
in the mid to late 1950s was short-lived. While models were presented with
new features of power and agency in scenes inspiring independence and
confidence, this representation was soon to be usurped by more submissive
and restricted poses, more receptive to the dominant male gaze.

After this brief moment of semi-equilibrium in photographic representation,

the more traditional gaze, as referenced by Berger, became increasingly
present and pronounced. The fashion ads may have been for women, but
they appealed to men in their construction and positioning of female
subjects. Even today, images continue to be habitually constructed to put
women in a position of submission or exploitation. Finkelstein expands on this
area, commenting on the assumption made by most photographers that their
viewers are heterosexual. Despite this assumption, images always offer an
essentially eroticized presentation of the female form, regardless of the
consumer's gender or sexual preference.

[Women are encouraged] to gaze at other women with that

"homospectatorial look." The entire fashion industry operates as one of the
few institutionalized spaces where women can look at other women with
cultural impunityWomen are encouraged to consume, in voyeuristic if not

vampristic fashion, the images of other women.' (59)

Interestingly, this same-sex gaze is no longer limited to women. Indeed, this

kind of reciprocity in same-sex gazing has increasingly appeared in the
images created for men's fashion, especially in the work of Herb Ritts and
Bruce Weber in the mid-1980s. This, among other experiments in
restructuring the gaze, has inflected the interpretations of photographic
images in fashion.

From the early Calvin Klein Jeans campaign in the beginning of the 80s, to the
seemingly omnipresent current Abercrombie and Fitch advertisements, the
idealized and fetishized male form is becoming more and more commonplace
in fashion photography. Women are no longer the sole recipients of the gaze
or the objectified and sexualized construction of photographers. With the
growing presence and popularity of men's magazines with fashion sections or
an exclusive focus on fashion, now men are being compelled to consume
ideals of themselves as well (Finkelstein 60). "In the 1970's, portrayal of
women erotica in the fashion images of [Newton] and Guy Bourdin responded
to and confronted changing concepts of femininity" (Brookes 25). *Find
source! In turn, in the 1980's, there emerged a photographic version of the
new man.' Conceptions of masculinity and sexuality began to be presented
with specific qualities, with a focus on the body, rather than the garment
(ibid.).

Bruce Weber has been responsible for creating some of the most sexualized
images of men in fashion photography. He is widely considered the master of
this kind of imagery and has continuously come under fire for his overtly
erotic work, especially in the homoerotic presentation of his male models.
Steel emphatically stresses his influence, calling his photographs for Calvin
Klein underwear in the early 1980s, "profoundly revolutionary" (126). Weber
pictured Adonis-like men clad only in the advertised product, with camera
angles and lighting giving his models a godlike aura and enhancing their
masculine physiology. The sexual nature of the photographs was not what
made Weber's images unique or groundbreaking. The gender of the models
was the uncommon and shocking aspect. Steel explains, "Erotic images of
women in lingerie were nothing new, but a lingering puritanism and
homophobia had militated against the portrayal of men as sex objects"
(Ibid.).

Other advertising campaigns that posed the question of whose gaze have
included most pervasively, the Levi's ads of the 1990s. Focusing on themes of
gender construction and deception, the images of the campaign raised such
questions as "Would it be possible to structure things so that women own the
gaze? Would women want to own the gaze? What does it mean to be a
female spectator?" (Barnard 137). In a 1994 ad for Levi's, these questions are
answered.

[Appearing] to be set in late 19th century rural America, two young women
leave the picnic they are enjoying with their parents and run down towards
the river, where they find a pair of discarded Levi jeans. Hiding behind a tree,
they watch as the young, male, well-muscled and attractive owner of the
jeans rises up from out of the water. The young women seem to almost
vibrate and quiver with mounting excitement; Stiltskin's crashing chords
reach a crescendo as the camera appears to move down his torso towards
where his jeans would be if he were wearing them. (Ibid. 137)

In such an advertisement, the male body is on display, the female becomes

the modern voyeur and power shifts to be in her favor. And yet, this apparent
shift in giver and receiver of the gaze is delusory because, as Barnard
suggests, "while the gaze might not be male, to own and activate the gaze is
to be in the masculine position" (140). So, it cannot be convincingly argued
that such images or advertisements are truly successful in contesting or
rendering void the structures of the gaze, nor that these images enable
women to form their own specifically feminine type of pleasure (Ibid.).

While there have been failures on the part of fashion photographers in

compromising or reversing the direction of the gaze and the gendered
spectator, experiments in the constructions, conceptions and perceptions of
gender, sexuality and androgyny have been numerous. Another Levi's
advertisement with a slightly different concept in mind illustrates this idea.
The ad from the mid-90s features a New York transvestite being leered at by
a lecherous taxi driver until she' notices some facial stubble and begins to
shave (Barnard 58). This image plays on the viewer's own definitions and
opinions of sexual identity and relies on the elements of deception and
surprise of discovery and realization to achieve its effect.

Another way in which the object of the gaze has been confused, confounded

and tampered with has occurred in the non-conformist presentations and

manipulations of gender, via ambiguous dress and posturing. In constructing
conceptions of the gaze, notions of gender and sexuality must undoubtedly
be confronted and examined. Finkelstein observes fashion's role as an
indicator of social change and progress, writing "[fashion weakens] the
prescriptions around gender-appropriate dress" (3). Two of the most
significant explorations into these areas during the 50s, 60s and 70s were the
representations of hyper-sexuality and androgynous or sexually ambiguous
figures. With each passing decade, these experiments of identity become
more frequent and extreme. Fred Davis concedes in Fashion, Culture and
Identity, "The history of Western fashion is marked by a profound symbolic
tension arising from the desire, sometimes overt though more often
repressed, of one sex to emulate the clothing and associated gender
paraphernalia of the other" (33). At the same time members of society have
been presented or confronted with images of consistently sexualized and
ultimately submissive women, photographers have long experimented with
conceptions and constructions of gendermasculinity and femininityby
popularizing the androgynous aesthetic.

The pronounced move towards a more ambiguous representation of gender in

fashion photography coincided with other major shifts in stylistic modes of
fashion of the mid to late 1950s. This move was quite subtle at first, with
shooting scenes changing from domestic milieus to natural' outdoor
settings. In turn, 50s day glamour characterized by pearls and immaculate
suiting was slowly replaced by more casual and eventually tomboyish looks.
"Androgynously toned fashionsreached their zenith in the unisex stylings
popular from the late 1960s to mid 1970s" (Davis 35). "During the 1960s the
narrow silhouette was evoked, to denote freedoms gained and the rejection
of a preceding claustrophobic femininity" (Arnold 122). Helmut Newton was
one photographer at the forefront of presenting this new construction. [Fig. 2]
Beginning in the 1970s, women in his images were often masculinzed either
in dress or behavior, featured with boyish haircuts, trousers, tightly rolled
black umbrella, exaggerated shoulders among other things typically
associated as men's possessions (Ibid.34). Entwistle notes the emphasis on
pushing the limits of gender masquerade in fashion photography, asserting

[Fashion] is obsessed with gender, [as it] defines and redefines the gender
boundary.' So while it would seem that today's fashions are more
androgynous, even uni-sex' clothes display an overriding obsession with
gender. Indeed, fashions in androgyny are further evidence of the degree to
which fashion likes to play around at the boundaries of sexual difference

(140).

[Figs. 3, 4] This recurring theme in fashion photographic practice illustrates

the continuing fascination with and concentration on conceptions of gender
and the nature of display. The apparent timelessness of this aesthetic of
representing models performing the ambiguities of gender in photographic
images highlights the social influence on and regulation of the body. Fashion
photography regularly tests these limits of social acceptability through
unconventional and unclear representations. The degree to which androgyny
is portrayed has varied over the different periods, but its quality has
remained omnipresent.

In a similar vein as the inconsistencies and transitory qualities of some

figments of fashion photography, the representation of femininity has also
been obsessively manipulated in the genre. The gaze, in part, has been
pivotal in constructing photographic conceptions of femininity. While such
constructs have shifted and changed form over the outlined periods, certain
fixtures have remained in place. Regardless of the date of a photograph, the
viewer can depend on the fact that the female model or models featured in
the image will be presented in a subordinate and exploited fashion. Where
risks have been taken and attempts to compromise or even overturn the gaze
and the curse of inferior femininity, the gaze only shifts in that the featured
woman now assumes the gaze of the male, while the male subject is
feminized. The edifice is still in place. And regardless of the female
mastering' the gaze and asserting her sexuality on her own terms, she is
still presented in a manner where she herself has been eroticized. She is
extremely pleasing to observe. Rodriguez supports this certainty of
representation with a defeated quality.

Sure women have seized more control of the way their bodies are
represented and discussed in the media and female photographers have
definitely contributed to a feeling that women are now celebrating their
power and physicality themselves rather than simply being fashion's victims.
But the fact remains that the imagery we see on today's magazine pages
even in the so-called cutting edge fashion magazines that often claim to be
debunking the fashion industryare by and large sexual fantasies about
women made with men in mind. (51)

And so it seems, regardless of changes in fashion photography evolving

through different contextual, social and historical climates, presenting the
female as a dominant or mere equal, has resoundingly failed. Even fringe
publications and other venues of alternative, unconventional and deinstitutionalized representation cannot resist the traditional aesthetic.

Theorists of the Frankfurt School offer more insight in interpreting fashion

photography in relation to images as a commodity form with the onset of
mass reproduction. Writing predominantly in the 1930s, Walter Benjamin, and
Theodor Adorno (in the 1940s and 50s), confront modern issues of
authenticity and its relation to the original image and transformations that
occur upon its immersion in the public sphere. Adorno's theories about mass
culture and the culture industry can be specifically applied as another
perspective in which to examine elements of fashion photography. Writers
approaching the topic have utilized such concepts in strengthening its
relevance in and to culture.

Looking at the repercussions of the media age in regard to the fate of the
original image, the figure of the fashion photographer as a star-maker links to
this discussion of reproduction and representation in a mass form. Benjamin
argues that as areas and elements of alternative and subversive culture are
appropriated by mediums of mass production and representation and widely
and eventually oversaturate the market, individual qualities are no longer
distinguishable as originals. Using this idea, the increasing popularity of star
and celebrity culture renders the artistic viability of fashion photography
irredeemable and void. As the characters of Thomas, Mars and Avery,
portraying fashion photographers in the previously referenced films, create
their stars,' their novelty products' are compromised and reduced by their
prepackaged approval of quality and marketability in the public sphere. Their
images of the stars,' rather than the individuals themselves, become
commercial currency. The photographers themselves become a kind of
commodity, and simultaneous producers of commodities. Brookes interprets
Adorno's theories to make her argument about fashion photographers.

[Adorno] saw the stamp of the machine everywhere, reducing everything to a

sameness,' reflecting and reinforcing a sense of alienation in all aspects of

private life and experience. As mass entertainment and advertising became

more dominant, they increasingly leveled experience down to the lowest
common denominator.' The threat of the culture industry was the production
and reproduction of sameness in all spheres of cultural life. (20, 21)

Through increased production and reproduction of images, identity and

originality are nearly impossible to retain. Everything becomes a copy of
some vague or possibly nonexistent entity.

This purely non-sexual yet fetishizing and coveting of women of the aesthetic
modes of other women argument seems difficult to substantiate, as emphasis
is increasingly placed on the body, emphasis equal to or even greater than
the garments resting on it. Indeed, in the beginnings of serious and focused
fashion photography in the 1930s, the clothes were the paramount
concentration. The body was de-emphasized. The pictured models did not
assert any kind of independence; the clothes that covered them subsumed
their bodies. Their corporeal nature was rendered abstract or denied outright
(Radner 133). Emphasis on the garment over the body continued until the
early 1950s. As the importance of the display of the model increased, shifts in
presentation became more apparent. From the late 50s on, the body became
the focus and existed in state of constant display.

Finkelstein supports this viewpoint decades later in her examination of

fashion's far-reaching influence. "In studies of the fashion photograph,
[scholars] have [noted] that this kind of photography, which was once a
disparaged practice, is now responsible for those images which order and
aestheticize the everyday" (17). The mass circulated, technologically
reproduced image seems to have unlimited reach in the present era.
Specifically, innovations in photographic, cinematic and computer imaging
continue to question the correspondence between what is seen and what is
accepted as normal. Through sheer saturation of public space, fashion
images overdetermine and normalize what was once dismissed as too
obscene, too trivial or too extreme in any other sense for the popular sphere.
As viewers encounter advertisements, the experience and meaning derived
from them is punctuated by the viewers' detached and somewhat passive
voyeurism.

Another way fashion photography can be understood and examined within

the context of the Frankfurt School theorists is in Adorno's collaborative work

with Max Horkheimer, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception." In this well-known piece, issues of social propriety and the
submission of creativity to the homogenizing whims of the culture industry
are confronted and deconstructed. The authors assert that no form in the
cultural mainstream has fully preserved its original and possibly alternative or
subversive qualities and roots. In being represented by the culture industry,
every form is inevitably and inescapably filtered and altered to be made more
appropriate for popular culture. This uniformity ensures and functions as a
form of social control, censoring any possible deviant ideas from infiltrating
and stirring up the masses. Where fashion relates to this system is the fact of
its inclusion within the culture industry. Fashion photographs ultimately
become part of the public domain, and in this process, even the most
scandalous or inventive images are toned down or censored by the
institution. No truly creative and innovative work survives this process of
social streamlining and sanitizing with integrity intact. It is this reality that
can be credited in part to fashion photography's repetitious and derivative
character.

Consuming the images, and subsequently their messages, the viewer is

participating in the culture industry and perpetuating the cycle of
homogenization. Of course, those viewers who are prompted to buy whatever
is being sold are more actively and directly feeding the apparatus, but by
even consuming the images alone, a purpose is being served that benefits
the institution. More actively involved in this process is the figure of the
fashion photographer, who creates and presents the star,' introducing this
new product' into the commercial and public spheres. The more a person
becomes a persona, more object than subject, the more the audience feels a
sense of removal from that individual. Even though the consumer may gaze
at and take in the image of the star almost anywhere, this act is one of
alienating and isolating distance.

Benjamin comments on the distancing effect between the viewer and the
image in his essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"
as referenced by Reka C. V. Buckley and Stephen Gundle in the essay "Flash
Trash: Gianni Versace and the Theory and Practice of Glamour. By analyzing
consumption and art in the industrial era, he notes the repercussions and
implications mediated or determined by mass production of objects,
specifically art objects, and the likely destruction of aura' with widespread
dispersal and distribution (334). As the star loses his or her human qualities
with increased representation as an image, this separation is presented as a

negative outcome. In the case of language and images however, Benjamin

asserts that this division is an act of liberation. Brookes borrows his ideas and
asserts, "The emancipation of the image from its caption, and of the productimage from the product, means that the advertising image has become the
pure imperative, not divisible into form and content, the pure veneer, the
absolute faade for and of itself" (22). As the image is divorced from its
original context, meanings shift and transform, and visual communication is
privileged over verbal. And yet, the ultimate consumer of such images ends
up losing, because they learn to accept the reproduction (the substitute) and
dismiss the uniqueness of every reality, most significantly, even when that
reality' is a person (Buckley and Gundle 334).

When the image increases in visibility, it becomes seemingly more accessible

and desirable. With this simultaneous pervasiveness and illusion of proximity
and attainability and distance and unavailability, the consumer seeks some
kind of tangible manifestation of the object.' Buckley and Gundle cite
Benjamin, who writes,

Every day the urge grows stronger to get a hold of an object at a very close
range by way of its likeness, its reproduction. Unmistakably, reproduction as
offered by picture magazines and newsreels differs from the image seen by
the unarmed eye. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely linked in the
latter as are transitoriness and reproducibility in the former. (334)

Mass reproduced images of desired objects offer a quick fix, but no finite
solution for the want. Fashion photography and advertising assembles and
proffers an idealized illusion. No reality can match the crafted image. And
when the illusion comes to substitute the actuality, public perception and
expectations are irrevocably altered through this fragmentation and
replacement.
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