Isabella Barrionuevo

Parsons School of Design

The Boundaries of Borderless Images: Fragmenting Feminine Practices in Fashion Advertising

Isabella Barrionuevo Core Studio: Thesis II May, 2018

______________ Hannah Whitaker Colin Stearns

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“Advertising is the act of drawing the attention of the public to a specific product or service. By employing methods of persuasion, advertisers endeavor to convince members of that public to purchase or otherwise acquire a product or service.” 1 - Encyclopedia of Gender in Media

“Femininity is an artifice, an achievement, a mode of enacting and reenacting received gender norms which surface as so many styles of flesh” (Butler 1985, 11)2 - Sandra Lee Bartky

The above epigraphs present the two key themes of advertising and femininity that are central to my thesis project. The intended purpose of the following statement is to describe and define the terms that I am using and how it pertains to my work. In this paper, I will first outline the processes and methodology integral to my images. Followed by an analysis of specific photographs in relationship to artists working with similar ideas, and finally, concluding with questions that may arise in those very images.

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Encyclopedia of Gender in Media, s.v. “advertising.” Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2012.

Sandra Lee Bartky. “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” in The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior, edited by Rose Weitz. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 27.

3 Every month, thousands of women’s magazines are reproduced and sold on stands in coffee shops, book stores, pharmacies, and subways stations. In these magazines, lie fashion and beauty advertisements targeted specifically towards a female audience.3 As a consumer of these fashion magazines, my inquiry into the construction of femininity begins with the ongoing pressure I feel to subscribe to and participate in the beauty expectations presented in their very pages because of the contours of my body. In other words, the pressure to put on makeup, wear heels, and use anti-aging cream stems from the fact that I am a female body and one of the ways it is reinforced to me is through the images, advertisements, and products sold in the magazines.

For my project, I use the magazine medium as my primary source of material by rephotographing the beauty practices within the advertisements of which I find myself subscribe to.

Yet, we now live in a digital world, so why the printed magazine? My inclination towards printed images comes, not only from its origins in photography, but also as a result of my poor sensory vision. Without eyeglasses, everything I see and perceive at distance is a blur. It was during the project’s early stages that I questioned the nature of the printed image, and by extension, image technology (e.g. the camera and printer) in its capability to render the female body. For example, I would look at the cover of September Vogue and ask myself, “What am I really looking at? What exactly do I think I am comparing myself to and why?” It was during this particular engagement in mid-September that I attached a miniature macro lens to my phone and briefly rephotographed the image to reveal the dot matrix. The boundaries of the borderless image as it exists on the cover of an 8.5 x 11 magazine relies on the power of vision, for with the use of a macro lens its content and subject fragment.

Brooke Erin Duffy. “Making the Magazine: Three Hundred Years in Print.” in Remake, Remodel: Women’s Magazines in the Digital Age (Baltimore: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 23.

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4 The aspect of rephotography that is integral to my work inextricably links itself to appropriation. By definition, appropriation is “taking as one's own or to one's own use.” 4 As I rephotograph the images in today’s fashion and beauty spreads, I treat each magazine as a site and source of values. Because everything is carefully constructed and placed, every decision from pre to post production must be calculated. With the use and language of its content and material, I argue that it illustrates a greater system of values embedded within the images. In fact, the actual process of rephotographing the magazines is firmly grounded in theory.

In her analysis of Michel Foucault’s Discipline & Punish: Panopticism (1975)5, professor emeritus of philosophy and gender studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Sandra Lee Bartky, remarks on his negligence to acknowledge gender in the theorization of modern society.

In his original writings, Foucault represents the Panopticon, an annular prison structure with a central tower and segmented cells, as model for the regulation and discipline of the everyday life of men.6 He considers the self-regulation of the body, imposed by the gaze from the central tower, to act as one universal body. By disregarding the fact that “the bodily experience of men and women differ,”7 Bartky questions “the disciplinary practices that engender the “docile bodies” of women”8 and examines those very behaviors “that produce a body which in gesture and appearance is recognizably feminine.” 9 Bartky continues into the specific practices, routines, gestures, and movements that describe “the process by which the ideal body of femininity—and hence the feminine body-subject—is constructed.”10 Such practices belong to the categories of:

Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “appropriation,” accessed April 10, 2018, http://www.oed.com.libproxy.newschool.edu/view/Entry/9877 5 Michel Foucault was a major French intellectual of the 20 th century and is considered a philosophical historian.

6 Matthew Robb. “Session 9”, Lecture, Design, Self, and Society, Parsons School of Design (New York, NY. October, 8, 2017) 7 Sandra Bartky. “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power” in The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior, (New York: Oxford UP, 1998), p.33.

8 Bartky, Foucault, Femininity, 27.

9 Ibid.

10Ibid, 33.

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5 diet, skincare, hair removal, makeup, posture, and clothing, all of which work together to construct and manage the feminine body in time and space. 11 This account is particularly critical to my project as it grounds and lays the foundation for my thinking in rephotographing the disciplinary practices found within an advertisement. After developing an archive of contemporary fashion magazines from local pharmacies and public libraries, I concentrated on rephotographing the parts of the body that were specific in depicting a feminine body. Notably, I focus on the beauty practices that I feel pressure to conform to for most of the images produced in this project reflect the construction of a feminine body with selective attention to appearance. For example, I actively consider the act and items involved in “getting ready” and the decisions made in that process, for example, what shade of lipstick or nail polish to choose, or what kind of high heels to wear etc.

Technically, all of the images are photographed in the studio using a macro lens. The decision to exclusively shoot with this lens lies in the fact that I wanted to get as close as I could to the “reality” of the image. I feel as though the lens could tell me a kind of truth into what I was looking at because it could “see” better than I do. In the process of rephotographing these beauty practices, I wanted to inspect the behavior and gestures of beauty practices and confront the pressure of my insecurity by looking at the source itself. In a way, there is a degree of performance as I take the picture because of the fact that I act like an investigator at a crime scene, or a scientist examining DNA. Each image is just one sliver of the ad, one moment of the bigger picture, and it is in these details where the tension to conform or not to these beauty practices manifests through the halftone print.

In discovering the materiality of the image, I utilize the dot matrix and the technological process of printing to interrupt the very image that it is simultaneously creating. The optical 11

For detailed accounts of each category see sections II-IV in Bartky Foucault, Femininity, pp.28-33.

6 illusion the halftone print creates as a result of moving towards or away from the image, produces a kind of tension between the formation and deterioration of the image. This serves as a metaphor for the anxiety between the feminine and masculine parts of me. I emphasize this tension through density, crop, and orientation. By using these tools, I abstract the content of the image it depicts to isolate and reduce it to mere form in order to discuss the forms of femininity that are in place to regulate my body.

Density as seen in the black areas of an image produces a sense of depth, or rather, the illusion of depth. Consider Fig.1, the black space encompasses two manicured fingers and serves as a void for the fingers to fill. The dot matrix, a Seurat pool of color12, flattens the image, grounding it in its material and commercial form counter to its intended photographic purpose of depicting a blush pink manicure. However, even that is inescapable since perception and photographic representation engages with distance. The further away the viewer stands, the more “complete” or photographic the image. This is also why the images are printed at 30 x 45 inches; so that the technological marking of printing may not dissolve, but rather the content that it is trying to produce.

Crop, on the other hand, tightens the image in that it loses all form of context as a means of transcending time and opposing film, where there is a beginning and an end. The crop is a direct reference to “fetishistic scopophilia” from Laura Mulvey’s essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. “Fetishistic scopophilia” Mulvey writes, “builds up the physical beauty of the object transforming it into something satisfying in itself…[and] can exist outside linear time as the erotic instinct is focused on the look alone”13 I utilize the tight crop frequently applied in cinema to fragment the body in order for the dot matrix to interrupt the content of the

12 A reference to Georges Seurat, the late 19th century painter who used the technique of Pointilism in his work.

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Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure, 840.

7 advertisement. While simultaneously, the image challenges the viewer to imagine its original depiction.

Finally, the orientation of the image typically counters its original position in the magazine. In its orientation I emphasize the overall formal qualities of the subject as well as exaggerating particular lines or shapes. Consider Fig. 3, the overall impression are red lips, but its orientation highlights the formal aspects of the lips in order for it to take precedence. And in that, the contours reference back to the curves and anatomy of the woman’s body. In addition, I direct the viewer by giving them an entry point into each image through the orientation or a specific detail. For example, the speck of glitter on the top right corner, or the sea of blue that outlines and contrasts with the red hair in Fig. 4. In total, the images exist as fractions and fragments of feminine practices that function together as a whole.

Looking at the system of advertising through magazines, reminds me of contemporary photographer Anne Collier, who also works with similar ideas and clichés. She too collects sourced material and found objects from the media, like magazines and vinyl’s, and rephotographs them against a plain white or black background. This particular aspect of Collier’s work draws me in the most. Through minimalism, Collier invites her viewer to think about the object presented in the photograph and grants them permission to impose their own meaning onto it. In a similar way, I show the viewer something they know already in a minimalist fashion, in order to maintain a clear focus on the dot matrix. In addition, her works like Eye (Enlargement of Color Negative), 2007, or Folded Madonna Poster (Steven Meisel), 200714 speak to Hollywood and known clichés. Specifically, the ways in which Hollywood has favored male directors and photographers or how the nude female body is used to sell products like Woman

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See Figures 4 & 5 on page 12.

8 With A Camera #115. In all of her work lies an undertone of critique on the representation of female bodies in the media and in consumerism. Meanwhile, I focus on the construction and representation of femininity in consumerism through the image technology used to produce the content in the magazines. Like Collier’s Double Marilyn, 2007,16 the technique of repetition employs itself through the dot matrix in my images and just as Collier signals Andy Warhol, my images point to Pop Artist Roy Lichtenstein.

Lichtenstein’s comic book inspired paintings of domestic spaces and the everyday were produced using the Ben Day Dot technique. Lichtenstein used “various kinds of stencils with perforated dot patterns”17 to create the dot matrix in which “each dot is of equal size and distribution in a specific area.”18 Although the process is not identical, the halftone dot matrix in my images is a derivative of Lichtenstein’s technique. For example, the halftone process allows for the dots to overlap with one another at certain angles, whereas the Ben Day Dot technique produces more negative space, granting it effortless spatial tonality. Both graphic in nature, the digital medium provides high intensity color and quantity of dots due the technology’s advancement. Yet, there is still greater room for error due to printer misalignment or a monitor’s poor calibration. The analog technique employed in Lichtenstein’s paintings is much more controlled and is quite similar to creating an analog halftone negative which was “made by photographing the original [photograph] through a glass screen ruled with a network of tiny apertures…[the dots] varied in size according to the intensity with which each had been

15

See Figure 6, p.12.

Ibid, 7, p.12.

17 Susan Stamberg, "One Dot At A Time, Lichtenstein Made Art Pop." NPR. October 15, 2012. Accessed April 12, 2018. https://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162807890/one-dot-at-a-time-lichtenstein-made-art-pop.

18 “Roy Lichtenstein; Ben Day Dot Technique.” Accessed April 10, 2018. http://www.awdsgn.com/classes/fall09/webI/student/trad_mw/burgan/final_project/pages/technique.html.

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9 illuminated by the original”.19 For example, shading in Lichtenstein’s paintings are depicted by bigger dots surrounded by decreasing smaller ones. In contrast, the halftone dot matrix decreases in tonal value to depict shadows. Since I cannot alter the kind of dot matrix found in the magazines, I control its scale. Like that of Lichtenstein’s paintings, I print my images large so that the dot matrix signifies “commercial” and “photograph”. In addition, all of my images lie on a vertical plane and are printed on FujiFlex, a highly reflective material analogous to the glossy advertisements in magazines.

In conclusion, the importance of discussing media in relationship to the construction of gender lies in the heart of my identity. The advertisements and images from the glossy pages of magazines that inundate and enthrall me every day, inform my perception of how I view myself.

Throughout the research process, it was pointed out that in the consumption of fashion magazines and the participation in an invisible community, hides magazines’ exclusive commercial purpose. 20 Resulting in a feeling similar to the internal violence of self-regulation21, the magazine poses itself as a tool of information of the hottest trends and coolest models as a way of “concealing the industrial nature of the magazine production process.” 22 Yet, this not only applies to magazines, but cinema as well. In a similar way, cinema aims “to eliminate intrusive camera presence and prevent a distancing awareness in the audience.” 23 My work aims to bring the audience into full awareness of the production of image making through the technology that it wishes to conceal.

Richard Benson, “The Printed Picture” (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010), p 222.

Duffy, “Making The Magazine”, 33.

21 Robb, “Lecture”.

22 Ibid.

23 Mulvey, Visual Pleasure, 843.

19 20

10 Bibliography Bahr, Leonard F. “The Photoengraving Process.” In ATA Advertising Production Handbook. 3d ed.

[New York: Advertising Typographers Association of America, 1963.

Bartky, Sandra Lee. “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.” In The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior, edited by Rose Weitz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. pp. 25-44.

Benson, Richard. The Printed Picture. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010. pp. 210-240.

Blessing, Jennifer, and Susan Thompson. “Anne Collier” In Photo-poetics: An Anthology. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2015.

CBS. “Pop Artist Roy Lichtenstein” YouTube. January 30, 2011. Accessed February 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jowA-pH-Y8.

Darling, Michael. “Anne Collier: Woman With A Camera.” In Anne Collier. By Michael Darling, Chrissie Iles, and Kate Zambreno. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; New York: Artbook/D.A.P., 2014.

Duffy, Brooke Erin. “Making the Magazine: Three Hundred Years in Print.” In Remake, Remodel: Women’s Magazines in the Digital Age. Baltimore: University of Illinois Press, 2013.

Flusser, Vilém. Translated by Anthony Mathews. Towards a philosophy of photography. London: Reaktion Books, 2000. pp. 8-30.

Kosut, Mary E., ed. Encyclopedia of Gender in Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2012.

Lazar, Michelle M. “The Right to Be Beautiful: Postfeminist Identity and Consumer Beauty Advertising” in New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity, edited by Christina Scharff and Rosalind Gill. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. pp. 37-50.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. pp. 833-44.

Nelson, Jennifer. “A Chick Slick History” In Airbrushed Nation : The Lure and Loathing of Women's Magazines. Berkeley: Seal Press, 2012.

11 Robb, Matthew. “Session 9”. Lecture, Design, Self, and Society, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY. October, 8, 2017.

“Roy Lichtenstein; Benday Dot Technique.” Accessed April 10, 2018. http://www.awdsgn.com/classes/fall09/webI/student/trad_mw/burgan/final_project/pages/techniq ue.html.

Stamberg, Susan. "One Dot At A Time, Lichtenstein Made Art Pop." NPR. October 15, 2012.

Accessed April 12, 2018. https://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162807890/one-dot-at-a-timelichtenstein-made-art-pop.

Wallenberg, Louise. “Fashion Photography, Phallocentrism, and Feminist Critique” In Fashion in Popular Culture: Literature, Media and Contemporary Studies. Edited by Joseph Hancockk, Toni Johnson Woods, and Vicki Karaminas. Fashion Bristol: Intellect Books Ltd, 2013.

12 List of Figures

Figure. 1: Isabella Barrionuevo Untitled (Nails #1), 2018 C Print, 30 x 45 in.

Figure. 2: Isabella Barrionuevo Untitled (Diamonds #1), 2018 C Print, 30 x 45 in.

Figure. 3: Isabella Barrionuevo Untitled (Lips #1), 2018 C Print, 30 x 45 in.

Figure. 4: Isabella Barrionuevo Untitled (Pearl #1), 2018 C Print, 30 x 45 in.

Figure. 5: Anne Collier Eye (Enlargement of Color Negative), 2007 C Print, 50 x 55 ¾ in.

Figure. 6: Anne Collier Folded Madonna Poster (Steven Meisel), 2007 C Print, 50 × 64 7/8 in.

Figure. 7: Anne Collier Woman With A Camera #1, 2012 C Print, 49 ¾ × 64 7/8 in

Figure. 8: Anne Collier Double Marilyn, 2007 C Print, 48 ½ × 63 ½ in.

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Enlargements

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