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| From Posner's Spray It Loud |
Ramamurthy reviews Barthes on denoted and connoted messages. Denotation is the most obvious reading, the surface reading, the fact of the photo. The connotation is inferred, is symbolic, and is also, for the advertiser, the more important level of meaning. Stuart Hall (1993) reflects on how messages are encoded and decoded, observing that for images to be successful, producers and consumers have to share a common frame of reference, a similar schemata. This is why corporations most always craft their advertising locally, in order to be able to speak to consumers effectively. Ramamurthy cites Posner’s Spray it Loud for examples of oppositional readings (trying to find a copy of this now).
Advertisers also create meaning through context, the example cited here being the apartheid era Anglo-American Corporation of SA using a photo of black striking mine workers (celebrating a victory against this very same company several years earlier) to establish distance between the company and its past in order to reclaim its reputation under the newly elected Mandela presidency. The company was recontextualizng the image to reposition itself.
Juxtaposition is often used to establish meaning, such as the inclusion of uncooked food in images of processed food. As Ramamurthy notes, this kind of juxtaposition hides the labor required to turn fresh produce into a food product. Most advertisements overlook labor entirely. Those that do not often adopt a romanticized, nostalgic view of the lone craftsman, who could not obviously produce enough commodities to sell to the entire world. Monochrome may sometimes be featured in such advertisements to lend verisimilitude.
The female body is often presented as an object to be surveyed. Whereas most early photography tended to show substantial portions of the body, by the 1970s there were growing instances, now ubiquitous, of body fragments, pieces in isolation: eyes, lips, legs.
The predominate theme of fashion photography has been gender and sexuality, though since the 90’s has come to comment on the larger world. As an arm of advertising, fashion photography borrows from other forms and so is difficult to define as a specific genre. A couple of contradictory features are noted. Fashion is obviously subject to a short shelf-life yet tries to create classic - timeless - looks. Although strictly advertising, fashion images often comment on editorial content. Although seeking to create something original, fashion shows us the constructed. Fashion, though, rarely comments on itself as an industry. Ramamurthy notes the army of textile workers, as well as the retail workers who see themselves working in “fashion” rather than as low-paid, temporary labor.
Ramamurthy then looks at tourist photography and the process of defining “the other.” The camera was one of the tools of colonial administration used to survey foreign locales and populations. A new and expensive technology, the presence of the camera alone implied an unequal power relationship between its owner/user and its subjects. Among the common tropes were the exotic foreigner, the erotic female foreigner, the virile western male adventurer, the romanticized peasant-laborer, developed Europe vs underdeveloped Asia and Africa. The wide availability of such images shaped the imaginations of tourists, who themselves aspire to make similar types of images on their own foreign journeys, and may even pay for the privilege of dressing themselves in local gear for the purpose of producing photographs. Fashion photography trades on the glamorous, exotic, and unusual and so has often featured foreign locales and settings as means of selling commodities. Even the props themselves can be commodified, as one example Ramamurthy cites of a fashion spread on Arab jewelry.
Don Salter is cited with concern for the contextualization of the image, that beyond connotation we need some understanding of political and economic realities. Often this information is not available, favoring the reality of consumption over production. Likewise, David Nye is interested in how the context of production affects photographic practice and looks at General Electric in the period between 1900-1930. The company learned to tailor its image making to different audiences, such as engineers, consumers, and labor. In the latter, the company used images to create the idea of the workforce as a family, part of a larger program to manage labor unrest.
The chapter finishes with a case study of Toscani’s 80-90s Benetton ads, highlighting the tension between spectacle and commerce. Ramamurthy cites Back and Quaade characterizing Toscani’s ads in three periods: 1) International harmony based on color, or race; 2) Radicalization and ambiguity, in the evocation of historical context, and 3) Pseudo-documentary and the “fetishisation of images of abject catastrophe.” The first phase coincided with Benetton’s rise from a company servicing the Italian market to a global brand and fit comfortably within contemporary cultural discourse. The second phase continued to develop the race theme, but began to exploit sensitive issues such as slavery, with an image, for example, of a headless black women nursing a white baby. The third phase moved completely out of the studio to employ documentary images shot for purposes other than advertising. These images created repeated problems, such as being paired with magazine articles on racial issues, or being erected on billboards during the 92 LA riots. The program imploded in the mid-90s with a series of images featuring death row inmates that cost Benetton sales contracts in the USA with Sears and 100 other stores. Shortly thereafter, Toscani and Benetton ended their relationship, demonstrating the limits of advertising to engage in issues subsidiary to generating profit.
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