Writing about Posing: myths and narratives of post-war fashion modelling

Abstract:
Histories of fashion photography, which offer a series of eminent photographic figures placed within time periods of styles and various works, have largely emerged from traditional narratives of art history. Therefore the object of study under scrutiny in such instances has tended to be the figure of the photographer, positioned as the primary ‘artistic’ creator. However, in more recent studies of fashion photography histories, and in particular that of the post-war era, the culture of fashion imagery has been re-addressed as scholars continue to question how such imagery forms points of discussion regarding certain tensions and debates within society at that time.

In its engagement with this latter approach this paper discusses textual accounts of posing, which can be read in writings of this period that specifically engage with the subject of photographic models and the working lives of fashion models. Drawing upon a range of ‘fashion texts’, including autobiographies, advice literature, and literary fiction, debates concerning aspects of production, consumption, femininity, and notions of the self, emerge. In its close look at how ‘the pose’ and ‘posing’ is discursively performed in such forms of textual representation, this paper questions the myths and narratives that inform meanings, both past and present, around this performative act.