engleski

Gender and Class in Interwar Photography: An Interdisciplinary View

This paper will use a corpus of photographs that were reproduced on the pages of specialized photography magazines published during the interwar period to examine common display practices with a problem focus on gender and class positions of the photographers and the photographed, and the relation between sociability and power. By making interdisciplinary connections between perspectives, insights and approaches from art history, ethnology and cultural anthropology, the paper will contribute to the reappraisal of the “naturalness” of gender and class positions in a society. Out of all the photographs published in photography magazines, we chose those—about 350 photographs published between 1927 and 1941—that show the human figure, and our examination implied the abandoning the classical interpretive apparatus, aesthetic evaluations and reliance on the usual historical and artistic interpretations of these and similar images. The method used to analyse the depicted characters and situations relied on the analysis of the content, or more precisely on the image inventory, according to the frequency of individual motifs. The main aspects considered in selecting the photographs include representation according to occupation, ways of spending leisure time and emotions exhibited by characters, as well as the objects that surround them, their posture, actions they are engaged in, space in which they are located, age structure, etc. This method resulted in a complex understanding of dominant representation practices and patterns, as well as the presumed social asymmetries, and revealed how photography of that time expressed, reflected, encouraged and perpetuated stereotyping of certain social groups.

Croatian photography, interwar period, gender, class, photography magazines

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