1 Visual seduction: eroticism in fashion photography Iva Milivojevi - Jestratijevi

abstract: Jean Baudrillards theory of seduction represents the basis for constituting postmodern iconography, i.e. the matrix for the production of images within the framework of visual culture. If we understand the media seduction in the post-Lacanian sense of acting, doing and behaving in the area of desire for the Other, that is in the area of subconcsiousness, then the reasons for creating visual contents as instruments for provoking human desires and fantasies are understandable. The game between subject (spectator) and object of the gaze has lasted uninterruptedly in the epoch of images, even though certain interventions are necessary in the traditional definitions of the right to observe considering that in the visual contents in our surrounding (film, magazines, art, advertisements) sexual characteristics of both genders are being simultaneously manipulated. The manner in which the content of the fashion photography is being made makes it an instrument for production and mediation of certain meanings. The area of the subject of photography as an object of the spectators gaze is determined as an area of seduction, destiny, of being fatal In that way, the purpose of eroticism in contemporary fashion photography is to seduce the audience, and in this way it only distances itself from its former/avant-garde functions of provoking the public. Each media presentation is based on a simulation of fetish presented as an object of both individual and group desire, and each visual use of a media image represents a fetish-like indulgence. Eroticism, sexuality and beauty of human body that in the postmodern-visual culture depict the symbols of fatal, cynical and parody-like seduction get irretrievably immersed into the totalizing mass culture. Has assimilation of the erotic and sexual into the field of popular culture, the trend of image production, lifted all the restrictions of censure and autocensure in exhibiting their characteristics, or are the limits of good taste in visual representation of fashion still being respected? Key words: gaze, seduction, desire, sexuality, visual eroticism, rhetorics of images, representation

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The role of photography as an artistic form and documentary media is widely known. However, what has been disputed since recently is the rhetorical power of photography in terms of its material/denoting ability to determine a meaning and transmit it in a form of a message. Observed from that aspect, it is easy to understand an early Bartes contribution to the examination of each photo not as a means of analogous presentation of reality but more as a coded system of meanings. Accordingly, this work is based mainly on the analysis and a possible interpretation of visual semantic systems that surround us with a special focus on the representation of bodies and gender identities within the production of postmodern fashion photography. The first erotic photos were officially made in France1. They brought a variety of models, dcor and poses, and in a picture, often appeared a homosexual and heterosexual intercourse besides the eroticism of the body, and such explicit and naked erotic contents very often bordered with pornographic. Authors who exceeded official moral norms by visual lust were anonymous most often, whereas those whose names were marked or recognizable ended up in prison or paid fines. However, in time photography was democraticized and erotic content was industrialized. The beauty of a female body was glorified by diversity of its presentations and in photos it was additionally emphasized by setting the erotic fashion iconography in a form of high heels, net socks, garters, shawls, veils and fans. At the same time, the presentation of unabashed and lustful activities within fashion artistic photography entailed a wave of repressive morale. Therefore in England, legal frameworks opposing to the publication of obscene contents originating from France were passed in 1824 and 1853. Soon after, such bans spread through the whole Europe. Namely, for a XIX century man nakedness was something that both fascinates and agitates and as such it for a long succumbed to rigid censorship. A significant vicissitude came with the World War I and violation of bourgeoisie values when the recent esthetics with postulates of classic ideals disappeared and the road was opened to new avant-garde conceptions which, among others, manifested in domain of artistic photography. Tendency towards the release of an abused and desecrated body led to setting a new attitude towards the body and eroticism. The body was denuded putting off so masks from cultural patterns and esthetic clichs and provoking the rigid and institutionalized mind. Erotica and sexuality became an area of social provocation and destruction of civic moral norms, and the acme of their exploitation was reached in surrealism. The intention to take offence at current morale, to put it to shame, to break sexual taboos while raveling intensely in sacrilege and desecration incited many surrealistic artists. Andre Breton defined eroticism as a privileged place, a stage of challenges and a ban where the deepest instances of a life are played and which brings salvation and necessary overturn2. Grasped in that

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way, eroticism became a constitutive element of a surrealistic movement, one of its objectives and an efficient weapon for avant-garde rebellion. To that effect, an occurrence of the erotic photography in avant-gardes is most often regarded as: (1) a form of emancipation tactics of disclosing and revealing human sexuality hampered in a civil society, or (2) as a transgressive act of provoking public opinion and moral norms, or (3) as an expression or a vestige of perverse enjoyment which demonstrates the power of a desire and field of lust3. Based on Freuds teaching, surrealists confirmed a sexual character of banal acts, situations and objects presenting a sphere of sexual sensations as a source of esthetic sensations. The erotic photography of avant-gardes acquired a dimension and a status of an artistic act, which by its visual identity carries an imagination and hallucinated fantasy. Photographic fantasy went deep into private, intimate and hidden making so an erotic content available to the eye of an observer. Scopophilia dominates in terms of a passive subject and an active eye with the absolute power of invisible presence of the one who observes in relation to that what is seen. Surrealistic creativity personifies a woman as an erotic symbol. On one hand, there is a trend of presenting a woman as an ideal through the representation of nakedness and beauty in an idealized form. On the other hand, there is a body fragmentation, and a woman is often presented headless, partially and depersonalized, reduced to a body representation becoming so the object of an artists fantasy, desire and manipulation in construction and deconstruction of a body. Moreover, the fragmentation of a female body might be interpreted as the simulation of passivity, sexual availability and helplessness what would further lead towards the analysis of ideology, biopolitics and power and accordingly produced gender identities. At the same time, in a surrealistic photo one can also notice a discomforting trait of misogyny in many scenarios that have an overtone of tormenting. The fragmentation of a female body and violence over it gives the most plastic picture of disintegrated dolls of the surrealistic artist Hans Belmer who radically performs the subversion of the cult of the ideal body. At the same time, playing with marks of youth attraction and beauty, in his artistic work Belmer questions the Batailles statement that eroticism is not just an expression of pleasant passion but it is related to the presentation of evil and inevitable death4. Moreover, as per technical realization of surrealistic photography, one can notice endless transformations and transfigurations achieved by photo manipulation, colourization, use of negatives and experiments in a dark room. In that way, effects of dreams, imagination, ecstatic delirium and narcotic vision are produced by technical manipulation5.

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Avant-garde artistic photography with all its characteristics contributed significantly to setting the genre of fashion photography. What is more, the avant-gardes return to initial renaissance boldness and fetishization of a body and sexuality generally had a great impact on the erotic iconography of our age. If we accept the comprehension of erotic as culturally shaped and symbolized sexuality6, then any use of eroticism as a basis of conception and thematization of various media contents is based on the presentation of conscious/(or more often) unconscious desires, fantasies, passions and taboos of one society. Therefore, hereinafter I will focus on the analysis of the presentation of erotica of the body through the representation of gender identities on postmodern advertising/fashion photography. The second part of the task will directly emerge from the previous and will boil down to understanding the rhetoric of an image that is a possible interpretation of messages (satisfaction, promises, fantasies), which give the viewers (conceived in a similar way) different visual contents. In this case, I choose advertising fashion photography as a representative sample of media, which by its essence serves for glorifying the beauty and attraction of a body by showing fashion objects. It would be its first classification. Moreover, advertising fashion photos are especially important because they massively circulate very often by camouflaging own nature, that is utterly fashion purpose, and so there are a myriad of examples of no-ads ads. Apart from that, the last but not the least, by taking into account a possibility of analyzing a photo as a valuable meaningful recording, it is unavoidable to set a request for the interpretation of photos that surround us in the media epoch since such iconic structures directly reflect on the construction of identities in everyday life. Unlike the avant-garde period in which the visualization of erotica and sexuality were a field of social provocation and destruction of civil moral norms, in the postmodern epoch hyper eroticism of images has an utterly different outcome. Even though basic subjects of the presentation in the area of the construction of media images with primarily erotic character are still human sexuality, a field of desire, perversion and gender identities with a strong visual exploitation of a body and its segments, effects of the visual presentation are noticeably different. And while avant-garde presentations of the erotic symbolic with a basic function of the publics shock were a tactic of the emancipation revelation and release of human sexuality deeply suppressed in a civil society, in postmodernism erotic and sexual are not a field of provocation, emancipation or self-analysis but an area of fatalistic, cynical and parade indulgence in a seducing, and symbolical expression for the purpose of achieving a common satisfaction of a completely alienated posthistoric civilization. The emergence of suppressed fantasies which follows the release of the male and female sexuality with previous taboo breaking caused the abolition of all limitations, censures and auto-censures in

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the presentation of erotic and sexual in modern visual culture. For instance, in an avant-garde photo an erotic process is expressed by metonymy (give as a present that what is absent and again introduce the absence into presence) where metonymic game is exactly the one that incites a desire by a hint. On the other hand, in postmodern hyper production of images, eroticism does not tend to denote a desire but gives it an explicit support. In terms of that, erotica has prevailed against esthetics long ago, and visual seduction has been prevented by banality of images. Signs of erotica and sex have assimilated into totalizing mass culture by which their presentations are largely (if not completely) deprived of once authenticity. Baudrillards predictions turned out to be true: sexual prevailed against seduction in our culture but acquired it as a compelled form.7 The fetishization of the body has long ago reached its acme. Sensual and careful revelation of parts of the body in some advertising photos has been replaced by presentation of nakedness even in cases when it was not necessary. (e.g. 2008 Tom Ford sunglasses campaign). So, after all, a question is what are the ways in a postmodern surrounding in which the body and sexuality are exploited for commercial purposes? And then and similar, if we define gender as a culturally determined correlation of sex (either as a consequence of biology or learning), then a presentation of a gender refers to a conventional presentation of those correlations, what directly imposes a request for the analysis and understanding of stereotype presentations of a gender within the advertising fashion photography. For the beginning, what is for sure is the fact that the construction of contents of fashion advertisements today are developing in several inconsistent directions. Fashion photographers mostly harmonize their themes and photos with images that circulate in mass culture. Therefore, a woman is pretty often presented as a sexual object, partially undressed and exposed directly to a males enjoyment. The 1990s, for example, a period of different subculture and increased use of narcotics among the young, inspired fashion photographers to present extremely thin models with disheveled hair and dark make-up in designed clothes making so an impression of camperotic. In time, the level of subversion in fashion photography additionally increased by the assimilation of elements of sadomasochism, fetishism and pornography to the frameworks of the mainstream fashion. This is specially seen in the placement of the trend underwear as outerwear where exhibitionistic forms of underwear are exhibited as independent garments. If we made any kind of groups of fashion advertisements based on their concepts, those which reproduce traditionally grasped gender roles can be put in the first and most spread group. So, this group of advertisements shall include all examples of the construction of narratives based on a dominant/patriarchal division into male/female that is active/passive. In

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Goffmans theory, this groupification of photos is called gender subordination8. As it can be concluded based on the name, this conception of media content is in the widest sense characterized by the simulation of female passivity. Therefore, it is most often related to the exploitation of (hyper)eroticism of the female body in terms of presenting bareness and poses typical for the construction of erotic photography. Highly provocative effects are achieved by moving the focus from presenting clothes, as a basic task of fashion photography, to the presentation of the body. Female sexuality is overemphasized through the role of a woman-seducer, an object of male fantasy. Women are shown on sexually available poses (lying position, open mouths, closed eyes) most often put on the floor or on the bed, which within frameworks of a house are denoted as dirty space in the first case and the most intimate places in the second9. Unlike women, in this kind of photos men are almost conventionally presented in an attitude connoting domination, in a standing position, reflecting directly a relationship of superior/male and inferior/female. Moreover, apart from this contrast, there is one more. A woman was mainly presented as nearly or even almost naked, whereas a man was always dressed in a suit and presented as hard-working. However, this kind of photo does not have necessarily to present a man, it is recognized as a basic concept even in photos showing only an erotized body of a woman, either as a whole or in segments, since the characteristic of the narrative of this groupification of photos is equal and based on the objectification of female, that is, reducing a woman as a person to a woman as an object of erotic fantasy. The second groupification of advertisements can be observed through the inversion of the previous. So, if the first boiled down to the reflection of patriarchal discourse, this groupification would be an alternative representation of female identities and therefore we will observe this kind of created narrative as a production of female empowering. Therefore, in this kind of advertising photos, women are presented as individual, successful, able to achieve their own goals and control others. Their beauty and erotica are especially emphasized and pointed as a weapon or basis of Amazonian power. Moreover, a fashion style propagated in these advertisements is based on the takeover of elements of the male fashion within female garments. Accordingly, women are most often presented in mildly erotized, business suits along with high heels, often a tie and glasses. Otherwise, if they are presented in more sexy and more womanly kinds of clothes, individually or in groups, a lack of rigidity in dressing is replaced by taking typically mens postures (in terms of standing, bended elbows, crossed arms) and a gaze suggesting an absolute power. It is interesting that we could add to this group of advertisements those which by presenting a woman as femme fatale perform the subordination and a final subversion of mens state. By photos structured in this way, men take postures that are within gender

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subordination described as typically female (presented in lying, sitting or kneeling position and very often partly naked). The narrative of such fashion photo comes from alternative representations of gender roles followed by the emphasized erotization/objectification, in this case a male body, what directly implies the inversion of dominant discourse (active/male, passive/female) towards active-female subject and passive-male object. The third groupification of advertising photos excludes gender relations and as a whole it boils down to the evocation of fetishization of the body as an object of an individual and collective desire. So, both male and a female body are presented in its idealized form as magic, adorned subjectfetish. The body is spectacularized to the extent which freezes the gaze and fixes an observer. In these fashion advertisements, the body dominates by the content of an image and becomes an erotic object exposed to voyeuristic enjoyment. Therefore, fashion accessories are not necessary so as the body be more attractive. The body becomes a privileged object of the fashion and all changes occur on the body itself. It is exercised, tailored, blackened, tightened, continuously changed and presented, always and only in its idealized form. And while this groupification of fashion photography glorifies the fetishism of the body through the exploitation of the idealized body form, the last group is based on the presentation of alternative sexualities, perversions and violence over the body. That is why in this case one perceives certain parallel in the construction of the content of fashion photography in keeping with previously described tendencies of the avantgarde artistic photography10. The similarity is in the content in a form of simulating misogyny and presenting a lustful, violent and helpless, defragmented body. The creation of effects of dreams, hallucinations or narcotic visions is pretty frequent, and in some examples it goes even to the radical presentation of the very act-taking drugs and opiates. Moreover, we would join to this groupification of advertisements all examples of explicit simulation of homosexual and heterosexual intercourses, then the creation of the atmosphere of boudoir very often followed by the presentation of orgies and signs of ungovernable sexuality and forbidden desire, and finally the representation of violence over the body itself. Since recently, the last example in fashion photography was the rarest. However, though severely criticized this conception of the narrative is getting more presented (the latest campaign of Dolce Gabbana came across great disapprovals of the public for presenting scenes alluding at group rape). As it can be concluded from all previously mentioned types of advertising fashion photography, eroticism of the body mostly produces a negative image of sexuality meaning that the exploitation of sex is done over the limits of good taste, what entails a question of social responsibility and review of media ethics. If we look back for a moment, we will see that

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fashion photos from the 1950s usually presented women in late twenties and their clothes were in the center of attention. During the 1960s, juvenescence was visibly stressed and skin was increasingly exposed11. Such approach contributes further to setting a tendency to devote increasingly less attention to clothes in fashion photos, what reaches its acme in modern advertising fashion photography. The ceremony of garments gives its place to bareness of the body though not with a function of the avant-garde shock of the public. The idealized naked body becomes the fetish of mass culture. Since each photo presents a semantically valuable recording (visual text), its meanings can be analyzed at denotation and connotation levels. So, the level of denotation would imply a literal meaning of a photo that is a simple reading of its content. Unlike denotation, connotation is a coded meaning that is a meaning that emerges from understanding hidden messages/codes, which any photo embraces.12 Therefore, at the level of a pure denotation of images shown by bodies themselves, we would conclude it is a trend of media mimesis of the body as a material presence of the subject. However, the body of a model is everything but valuably neutral. Accordingly, by searching for connoted meanings of image contents, we would conclude that it is a postmodern tendency towards poly-semantic determination of the body as fetish, goods, symbols, determiners. Massive media obsession with the ideal body results in media reduction of a being to an object. This substitution of a part for the whole, of a thing-an object, an organ, a portion of the body-for the subject, is the effect of a very important representational practicefetishism.13 The body-whole is fragmented into microscopic details, chest, legs, torsoand such fetishistic attention to the detail is a salient feature of pornography (due to what we could denote this kind of photography as soft porn), and from certain feminists is seen as a form of male violence, or sadistic impulse in male gaze whose pleasure thus consists of cutting up womens bodies into visual bits and pieces (she was reduced to her body and her body in turn was reduced to her sexual organs14). Though many visual presentations survive at margins of good taste, the fact that contents which in any sense exceed this limit rarely entail a complete censure is utterly defeating. On the contrary, a censure very often boils down only to certain countries15, magazines, TV shows whereas in others it is still publicized or, after all, such content continues circulating on the web. This problem should incite questions of pedagogical and educational responsibility of children and the young as such advertising content is completely available to most of them. The other thing I have tried to point at by this groupification of advertising content boils down to the overview of a representative sample of commercial fashion photos. As I have previously said, the reach of these contents is incredible as advertising fashion photos appear increasingly in a

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form of no ads-ads. In that way, despite avoiding direct advertising campaigns every day, we meet their contents very often in a indirect form (advertising metastructure, text without picture or picture without text). While advertising especially fashion products, we saw a wide presence of binary (male/female, gay/straight, normal/obscene). The mentioned is directly in relation with the production of stereotypes as the most present practice of representation. In our case, the production of stereotypes boils down to the representation of gender differences at the principle of simplification and presentation of essential/innate differences and traditionally understood gender roles. Thereby, concepts of the presentation of gender are inseparable from the analysis of the content of fashion photography as well as questions of the relation of difference and power. As we have already seen, it is noticeable that the production of stereotypes as a practice tends to the fixation of meanings (male/active, white/female/fetish, exotic Other). At the same time, there is a practice of reversing stereotypes to less usual direction in mass culture, though to a smaller extent. Halls process of taking an existing meaning and re-appropriating it for new meanings is called trans-coding 16 and that process is noticeable in all advertising contents, which perform the inversion of stereotype meanings bespeaking for instance black is beautiful or woman is independent/dominant or male is passive etc. This media strategy of the construction of narrative in a way that provokes dominant resumes of the representation is significantly important though it is completely clear it has no power of final changes of binary in the process of stereotype representations. However, its existence as an alternative method (counter strategies) of representing gender, racial, ethnical, subcultural and other identities is important in terms of giving a positive foretoken in cases of a negative image of media presentation (especially of the weaker gender, race, certain ethnicity). Moreover, various practices of representation are of immense importance for necessary redefining of otherness and difference in a postmodern context. As per media exploitation of the ideal body, an example of fashion advertisements is especially important since it is a matrix for the further reproduction of current esthetic ideals. Since the perception of the body depends on the visual representation of physical in images surrounding us, it is of an extreme importance to raise awareness of influences visual presentations have on the internalization of self-discipline in everyday life. During the thirties of the last century, an avant-garde fashion designer, Elsa Schiaparelli, revolutionary declared that clothes shall not be adjusted to the body, but the body shall be adjusted to clothes. Today, we are witnesses to the mentioned rule the body becomes a privileged object. The obsession with physical in a modern context contributed to the adoption of different methods of body shaping, from healthy such as sport, over dangerous as dietetics, to utterly radical such as plastic surgery. Moreover, as we have

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seen in a succession of examples of different groupification of advertising photos within mass culture, the spectacularization of body is followed by its utter bareness. In the final scene of Robert Altmans film Pret-a-porte (1994), a pregnant woman walks naked down the catwalk. The audience is first skeptical, but then such move is followed by a huge applause. The similar reaction of the audience is incited by an advertising image with a difference that it is impossible to shock the audience in the atmosphere having no taboos any more. Visual seduction is characteristic for the atmosphere governed by the lack of erotic representation. The ban is what incites a desire. At the moment when erotic is moved up to pornographic, scarcity disappeared along with a ban and a desire17 and accordingly the stadium of sex release simultaneously marked the end of its seduction.

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By the end of World War II, Paris had a leading role in the production and distribution of erotic contents. Ksavijer Gotje: Seksualni faktor kod nadrealista, Delo, volume 8, 1983, page 38. 3 uvakovi Misko: Pojmovnik suvremene umjetnosti, Horetzky, Zagreb, 2005, page 174. 4 Bataille, Georges: Eroticism, Bigz, Belgrade, 1980, page 15 5 More in Todi, Milanka: The Impossible, Surrealist Art, Museum of applied arts, Belgrade, 2002. 6 uvakovi, Misko: Pojmovnik suvremene umjetnosti , Horetzky, Zagreb, 2005, page 172. 7 Baudrillard, Jean:O zavodjenju, Belgrade, Oktoiks, 1990, page 53. 8 Goffman, Erving: Gender advertisements, Harper, New York, 1979. 9 Floors are associated with less clean, less raised parts of a room, for instance a place of dogs, baskets with dirty laundry, street shoes and similar. 10 while in avant-garde intentions, the effect of evocation of unconscious was created by technical manipulations of a photo, in a modern fashion photography all effects are the result of digital procession 11 Svensen, Las: Philosophy of fashion, Geopoetika, Belgrade, 2005, page 77. 12 Barthes gave his studying of the language of photography in his work Rhetorics of the Image, which later was implemented in Semiology of Painting by Louis Maren and other semilogists dealing with visual texts reading. 13 Hall, Stuart: Representation, Cultural representations and signifying practices, Sage publication, London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi, 1997, page 266. 14 Ibid, 266. 15 example Tom Ford-provocative campaign for Tom Ford perfume and glasses are forbidden in many countries 16 Hall, Stuart: Representation, Cultural representations and signifying practices, Sage publication, London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi, 1997, page 270. 17 Baudrillard, Jean: O Zavodjenju, Belgrade, Oktoiks, 1990, page 11.

Biography: Iva Milivojevic-Jestratijevic, Phd candidate in Theory of Art and media, University of Arts, Belgrade, Serbia

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Bibliography:
1. Barthes, Roland: Rhetorics of the image, in Image-Music-Text, Fontana, Glasgow, 1977. 2. Bataj, or: Erotizam, Bigz, Belgrade, 1980. 3. Bodrjar, an: O zavodjenju, Oktoix, Belgrade, 1990. 4. Gotje Ksavijer: Seksualni faktor kod nadrealista, Delo, god. 29, sveska 8, 1983. 5. Todi, Milanka: Nemogue, Umetnost nadrealizma, Muzej primenjene umetnosti, Belgrade, 2002. 6. Svensen, Las: Filozofija mode, Geopoetika, Belgrade, 2005 7. uvakovi, Pojmovnik suvremene umjetnosti, Horetzky, Zagreb, 2005. 8. Robert, Altman: Pret-a-porte, 1994.