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Abstract
In Camera Lucida Roland Barthes outlines how posing for the camera is a performative act in which one lends oneself “to the social game”; therefore “I pose, I know I am posing, I want you to know that I am posing, but (to square the circle) this additional message must in no way alter the precious essence of my individuality.” This article examines some of the ways in which the pose and act/action of posing have been articulated in selected accounts of post-war fashion modeling. In doing so it questions the ways in which the pose and act/action of posing may be considered in terms of what Raymond Williams terms “structures of feeling,” which is feeling as both a product of, and as productive in, social, historical, cultural and individual contexts.
Notes
1. There are both similarities and differences in the histories and working practices of male and female models (see Entwistle Citation2004). In this article, thereafter, I shall refer to the model in the feminine pronoun as I am specifically examining the example of post-war female fashion models.
2. Whilst not all fashion photographers working at this time were male (see Arnold Citation2002; Conekin Citation2013), narratives concerning the photographic process and the relationship between photographer and model tend to emerge from a gendered discourse that concerns relations of power, both economic and symbolic. This question of gender and gendering of professional roles in the material production and immaterial labor of fashion modeling requires further investigation.
3. However one should be mindful that narratives of radical breaks, particularly in the history of 1960s Britain, can be “simplistic and unhelpful as a way of thinking about the history of fashion, photography, the media, and society in post-war Britain” (Conekin Citation2010, 284).
4. On “immaterial labour” (see Lazzarato Citation[1996] 2006).
5. Here I employ Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s alternative definitions to autobiography which in its traditional classificatory term can be exclusive rather than inclusive (see also Marcus Citation1994, 149–151). Life writing refers to “writing that takes a life, one’s own or another’s, as its subject and life narrative refers to autobiographical acts of any sort” (Smith and Watson Citation2010, 4).
6. One can also consider wider interpersonal and networked relationships occurring within the total space of the photographic studio and the various persons and professions involved in the production of fashion imagery (see Dixon and Dixon Citation1963, 83–93).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Felice McDowell
Dr. Felice McDowell is an Associate Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies at the London College of Fashion. Her doctoral research is a history of British fashion media and the representation of public cultural spaces in editorial photo-spreads. Her current research interests are in methodologies of fashion history, archival research, critical theory, life writing and the visual and textual representation of fashion “work.”