The cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s theories on the concept of representation are utilised to critically analyse and interogate selected images from fashion magazines, which depicts the female corpse in an idealised way. In this research paper my intention is to explore, within a feminist reading, representations of the female corpse in fashion photography and art. This mini-dissertation serves as a framework for my own creative practice. An Analysis of the Politics of Representation promotes a discussion of fashion iconography within gender and media research. By engaging critically with the representation of the female body and how meanings are mediated between producers and viewers, 'In Search of the Female Gaze: Women as Practitioners of Fashion' Photography. French feminists Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous are also of great influence in this thesis, as well as Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. As a foundation to my argument, I draw a parallel between the depictions of women in film studies and in art history, taking in consideration the discursive fabric of theorists such as Laura Mulvey, John Berger, Mary Ann Doane, Linda Nochlin, Rosalind Gill and Rosemary Betterton. A central idea of this paper is to emphasise that femininity is a social construct and to present the manner in which the female gaze eschews its conventional stereotypes. Additionally, through a descriptive approach, it intends to showcase fashion photography as a vehicle to debate gender and sexuality within patriarchy. The aim of this paper is to explore the underlying meanings behind traditional representations of women in the fashion photography milieu and to evidence how fashion photography mirrors culture, thus carrying symbolic value and ideological codes. 'In Search of the Female Gaze: Women as Practitioners of Fashion Photography' uses the imagery of photographers Helmut Newton, Miles Aldridge, Deborah Turbeville, Corinne Day and Maisie Cousins as case studies in order to investigate the nuances between the way men and women look at and photograph women. It incorporates a multidisciplinary theoretical framework, embracing feminist and psychoanalytical discourse and semiotics. Photo: Sigourney Weaver by Helmut Newton, 1995.This thesis examines the female gaze in conjunction with fashion photography. After arriving in Singapore he found he was able to remain there, first and briefly as a photographer for the Straits Times and then as a portrait photographer”. At Trieste he boarded the “Conte Rosso” (along with about 200 others escaping the Nazis) intending to journey to China. He was issued with a passport just after turning 18, and left Germany on December 5, 1938. The increasingly oppressive restrictions placed on Jews by the Nuremberg laws meant that his father lost control of the factory in which he manufactured buttons and buckles he was briefly interned in a concentration camp on “Kristallnacht”, November 9, 1938, which finally compelled the family to leave Germany. Interested in photography from the age of 12 when he purchased his first camera, he worked for the German photographer Yva (Elsie Neulander Simon) from 1936. Newton attended the Heinrich-von-Treitschke-Realgymnasium and the American School in Berlin. “Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara “Claire” (Marquis) and Max Neustädter, a button factory owner.
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