Uniform, Yugoslav People's Army shock worker in rebuilding the country and building socialism, 1950.
Center for Research of Fashion and Clothing – CIMO researchers will present the work Rhetoric of Photo-Image in the Function of the Media of Mass Visual Communication and Canonization of the Ideological Matrix of “Masculinity” at the conference Socialism: Construction and Deconstruction; Pula, 1.-3. October 2015
Abstract:
Photography as a striking medium of visual communication, with its multiplied and aestheticized image, was an ideal means of articulating, producing and representing the ideological concept of the "new man" in the construction of Yugoslav socialism. The rhetoric of the photo-image does not simply reflect reality but creates "photogenic images" of the model of that reality which supports the myth of progress as a "historical task." Therefore, reading these images reveals "embellished" realism as photo-realism, because in the media nature of photography itself (close-up, editing procedures, conflict of plans, views, etc.) it functions in a pars pro toto way. Its ideological instrumentalization thus acquires educational, pragmatic and other roles ("re-education") in the process of translating "socialist humanism" into everyday practice. The coding of photo-images as patterns of collective practice can be traced to various forms of their use in visual and ideological canonization, and thus in the construction of male identity that was built as an iconic sign of male power through body, suit and appearance. Therefore, the photo-image is first articulated as informative and representative and then as aesthetic. However, in the vast majority of examples, it is extremely aesthetically sensitized in the authentic manner of the visual culture of modernism. Although it is in the function of stereotyping (creating stereotypes of masculinity: strength, health, male "beauty" that canonizes types: soldier, athlete, brigadier), the dress code is carefully present, like a "male manifesto" that purifies, distills picture.
Keywords: medium of photography, ideology of socialism, rhetoric of photo-image, stereotypes of masculinity
Authors:
Sonja Briski Uzelac, Ph.D.
Tonči Vladislavić, Prof.
http://www.unipu.hr/fileadmin/datoteke/CPKIS/socnaklupi2015_KNJIGA_SAZETAKA.pdf
* The project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and the City Office for Culture, Education and Sports of the City of Zagreb, for 2015.
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* Photos: private archive t.v.
