{"title":"假裸体:人体丝袜和摄影在最后关头","authors":"Mary Bergstein","doi":"10.1080/03087298.2022.2050049","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The visual culture of the female nude in Western art, after decades of attention, possesses a considerable genealogy of critical scholarship. The photographic imagery of women’s bodies occupies a significant place in this legacy, yet there are areas of inquiry that have to date remained little examined. In this article I consider a small and eccentric group of images, made by commercial photographers for popular consumption, posed by the American socialite Clara Ward around the turn of the twentieth century, as a case study of faux nudes – studio photographs in which models were encased in semitransparent body stockings, thus generalising, protecting and idealising the female body in its representation. If nudity is – ideally – an absolute state, it is nevertheless culturally complex in its various guises. The faux nudity constructed in these glamorous photographs was an invention of modern technology made possible by advances in commercial textile production as well as photography, as the stockinet body stocking provided a fiction of marmoreal whiteness further enhanced by being rendered in monochrome, and then widely distributed through cabinet prints and postcards. Around 1900 such artefacts further mystified the woman’s body in visual culture, producing a fantasy woman for modern times.","PeriodicalId":13024,"journal":{"name":"History of Photography","volume":"45 1","pages":"128 - 138"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Faux Nudes: Body Stockings and Photography at the fin de siècle\",\"authors\":\"Mary Bergstein\",\"doi\":\"10.1080/03087298.2022.2050049\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"The visual culture of the female nude in Western art, after decades of attention, possesses a considerable genealogy of critical scholarship. The photographic imagery of women’s bodies occupies a significant place in this legacy, yet there are areas of inquiry that have to date remained little examined. In this article I consider a small and eccentric group of images, made by commercial photographers for popular consumption, posed by the American socialite Clara Ward around the turn of the twentieth century, as a case study of faux nudes – studio photographs in which models were encased in semitransparent body stockings, thus generalising, protecting and idealising the female body in its representation. If nudity is – ideally – an absolute state, it is nevertheless culturally complex in its various guises. The faux nudity constructed in these glamorous photographs was an invention of modern technology made possible by advances in commercial textile production as well as photography, as the stockinet body stocking provided a fiction of marmoreal whiteness further enhanced by being rendered in monochrome, and then widely distributed through cabinet prints and postcards. Around 1900 such artefacts further mystified the woman’s body in visual culture, producing a fantasy woman for modern times.\",\"PeriodicalId\":13024,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"History of Photography\",\"volume\":\"45 1\",\"pages\":\"128 - 138\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.3000,\"publicationDate\":\"2021-04-03\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"History of Photography\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2022.2050049\",\"RegionNum\":2,\"RegionCategory\":\"艺术学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"0\",\"JCRName\":\"ART\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"History of Photography","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2022.2050049","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ART","Score":null,"Total":0}
Faux Nudes: Body Stockings and Photography at the fin de siècle
The visual culture of the female nude in Western art, after decades of attention, possesses a considerable genealogy of critical scholarship. The photographic imagery of women’s bodies occupies a significant place in this legacy, yet there are areas of inquiry that have to date remained little examined. In this article I consider a small and eccentric group of images, made by commercial photographers for popular consumption, posed by the American socialite Clara Ward around the turn of the twentieth century, as a case study of faux nudes – studio photographs in which models were encased in semitransparent body stockings, thus generalising, protecting and idealising the female body in its representation. If nudity is – ideally – an absolute state, it is nevertheless culturally complex in its various guises. The faux nudity constructed in these glamorous photographs was an invention of modern technology made possible by advances in commercial textile production as well as photography, as the stockinet body stocking provided a fiction of marmoreal whiteness further enhanced by being rendered in monochrome, and then widely distributed through cabinet prints and postcards. Around 1900 such artefacts further mystified the woman’s body in visual culture, producing a fantasy woman for modern times.
期刊介绍:
History of Photography is an international quarterly devoted to the history, practice and theory of photography. It intends to address all aspects of the medium, treating the processes, circulation, functions, and reception of photography in all its aspects, including documentary, popular and polemical work as well as fine art photography. The goal of the journal is to be inclusive and interdisciplinary in nature, welcoming all scholarly approaches, whether archival, historical, art historical, anthropological, sociological or theoretical. It is intended also to embrace world photography, ranging from Europe and the Americas to the Far East.