Introduction

The limitations of the photographic medium determined the first photographs were of still life subjects. Within a short period portraits of people capable of keeping still during the long exposures required were possible. As photographic technology advanced diversification took place. The physical and financial restrictions placed upon family portraiture diminished as film and lens speed increased. As printing and reproduction processes developed, photography was used more and more as the primary source of visual reference. Today studio photography covers many genres. Within these fall advertising illustration, portraiture, corporate, architecture, film library and product photography. Advertising surrounds us in an urban environment, but within advertising illustration there are many other genres. Fashion, food, product, still life, car photography, etc. Each is a specialised area, but all have a common outcome. Communication. The style and power of visual communication has evolved in parallel with photography to the point where they are inseparable within the current concept of mass media. By definition commercial practice means that as a photographer you become part of the marketing mechanism by which manufacturers advertise their product. It becomes your responsibility to communicate its visual merits and advantages. The fashion photographer on the other hand is trying to create an overall effect communicating ‘lifestyle’ as a product merit. The catalogue photographer is more concerned with producing large volumes of work without sacrificing product detail. The main street portrait photographer is expected to make ‘little johnny’ look like ‘little johnny’ and the studio wedding and baby photographer is being paid to ensure a faithful record is kept of family members and sometimes to glamorise the ordinary.

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Advertising illustration

Advertising illustration covers many photographic genres, the most often seen being still life (product) and fashion. The greatest commercial user of photography is the mass media. In newspapers and magazines the majority of images appearing are advertisements for one product or another. Photographic advertising illustration began when there was the capability to produce reproductions in large numbers. It has since become an effective tool of the advertising industry. The use of photography for advertising illustration started in the 1850s but was restricted to actual prints handed out to customers. Halftone printing processes saw the introduction of photographs for advertising during the 1880s. Black and white photographs were widely used by the 1920s and reliable colour reproduction became the dominant medium for advertising illustration from the 1950s.

1930

Samantha Everton

During the 1970s and early 1980s advertising photography became synonymous with expensive high quality imagery and reproduction. This created the environment where the skills photographers applied to lighting their photographs were used in the production and lighting of TV commercials. Prior to this the inherited limitations of television technology had meant the approach to lighting was generally to turn on all the lights, flood the subject with sufficient light and keep contrast to a minimum. In advertising the primary purpose of the photographic image is to communicate information and attract attention. This is achieved by an image being used to support the headline and body copy or as the basis of the whole concept. See ‘Art Direction’.

Still life

The first photograph taken using light sensitive emulsion was a still life of the view from Niepce’s workroom window (1826). This was due more to the length of the exposure (about eight hours in bright sunlight) than a creative decision to photograph something that didn’t move. Early photography copied the approach of painters to their subject matter. This led to most examples of photographic images being centred on the stylised still life so popular with artists. The still life not only suited the long exposure times required by the film emulsions of the day but also provided a subject with which the photographer and the limited viewing public were familiar. Since then extensive use of still life has been used in advertising and commercial illustration. This can range from sophisticated photographs of perfume in expensive international magazines, visually and technically precise shots for the latest car brochure to product catalogues that turn up in your mail box. In its current commercial form, still life photography falls into two categories. Large and small. Small is called table top, but size is only limited by the size of the table. This could be anything from a watch, a can of beans, a TV, to a sumptuous banquet. Large is everything else. Room sets, cars, trucks, right up to a Boeing 747.

Pauline Tanuwidjaja

Portraiture

The first commercial use of photography was in the reproduction of portraits. Until photography became commercially viable painters had been the main source of portraiture. The process involved was long and painstaking for both the painter and the subject and the result was always only one picture. The photographic process was much shorter, almost immediate by the standards of the day. With the introduction of Calotypes in 1840 the production of a negative enabled the photographer to print as many copies as the customer required. In the 1850s small portraits called Ambrotypes were being produced with exposure times of between two and twenty seconds. These relatively short exposures made family portraits easier to co-ordinate and photograph. Photography became the primary visual history for families. Photographic portraiture remained, however, the privilege of the affluent.

In 1854 the French photographer Disderi made a major technical advancement. His process of exposing multiple images onto one negative (similar to multiple image passport cameras) substantially reduced the cost of portrait photography. He was one of the first photographers to promote photographs to the level of consumer desirables. He began the business of photographing celebrities, producing large numbers of prints and selling them to the public as a purely profit-making exercise. The celebrity pin-up, family portrait, wedding or new baby photographs were no longer the domain of the wealthy. This affordability was the beginning of the photographic industry as we know it today. By the 20th century photographic portraiture was available to everyone. The Kodak Camera released in 1888, followed by the Box Brownie in 1900, created a worldwide market for amateur photography. Although not photographed in a studio the average snapshot has as its dominant subject people. Millions of photographic portraits are now taken every day.

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Commercial portraiture

Portraiture began to appear regularly in magazines such as Vanity Fair and Vogue, the forerunners of the pin-up and glamour magazines, after WW1. The content of the portrait was usually a celebrity of the time. The glamour portrait was to remain a benchmark until the 1960s when photographers such as Diane Arbus started to challenge the normal attitudes to portraiture with photographs of the less fortunate and society fringe dwellers. Between the wars, with the availability of high quality small format cameras, a genre known as ‘environmental portraiture’ became popular, with photographers such as Arnold Newman being one of the main exponents. The major difference between the two genres, studio and environmental, is, as the name implies, the subject is photographed in their environment (home, workplace, etc.) and not in a formalised studio situation. At a commercial level the local photographer, found in the main street of most towns and cities around the world, has enough skill and technology available to produce a more than acceptable image. However, the role of the commercial portrait photographer has been seriously challenged since the introduction of fully automatic cameras and the constantly developing digital technology. The great portrait photographers, amongst them Yousuf Karsh and Richard Avedon, command large fees, and limited prints of their work are sold at a comparative level to works of art. They and others have made photographic portraiture equal in stature to the painted images photography had tried to replace. The whole process has gone full circle leaving a legacy of thousands of practising portrait photographers.

Rachel Dere

Fashion

The first halftone reproductions direct from a photograph were appearing on a regular basis by the 1880s in magazines such as Les Modes and Vogue. Until then a photograph was used as source material to create a woodcut or lithograph as part of the printing process. The images were rigid portraits. An inanimate person in a very structured environment. This was due not only to an inherited approach to the painted portrait but also to the limits placed upon the photographer and subject by long exposures. The requirement of the image was to show the design and quality of the garment as clearly as the processes of the time allowed. This was the start of what is now one of the most lucrative and sophisticated genres of photographic illustration. From about 1911 onwards the use of soft focus and romanticism changed the look of fashion images appearing in Vanity Fair and Vogue. This was not a unique approach. The work of Julia Margaret Cameron had preceded this by over sixty years, but it was the first use at a commercial level in what we now call the mass media. It was not until the second decade of the 20th century that photographers such as Edward Steichen took fashion photography away from so-called high fashion into the arena of ‘style’ with which it is associated today. As the attitude of women began to change in the 1920s so did the approach to how they were photographed. They were no longer objects on which to hang clothes but independent personalities who happened to be wearing clothes. Fashion photography of the 1930s and 1940s reflected the feelings and limitations of the time. Fashion and design were determined by the materials available leading to an austere but natural approach to fashion imagery.

Kata Bayer

Fashion since 1950

Gradual change took place in the post-war 1950s. By the 1960s and 1970s gender equality and the use of colour with its ability to create mood and excitement began to dominate fashion images. Youth culture became fashion and fashion became youth culture. A controversial change came in the late 1980s when a strong sense of independence, non-gender specific sexuality, eroticism and voyeurism became a dominant theme in fashion magazines and magazines featuring fashion. A style developed with great success by Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin. The antithesis to this was the dream-like work of Sarah Moon where the image had a lyrical sense of imagination and unreal but desirable perfection. The garment was no longer the important object in the photograph. What wearing the garment could do for you was now the message. Throughout the development of fashion photography there was a distinction between advertising (design and quality) and editorial (lifestyle). The difference is now hard to distinguish. Fashion photography has reached the stage where lifestyle and image are so important that at times the design and quality of the clothes being worn by the model becomes obscure.

Alison Saunders

James Newman

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