Real Fantasies: Edward Steichen's Advertising Photography

Abstract

Reviewed by: Real Fantasies: Edward Steichen’s Advertising Photography* Regina Lee Blaszczyk (bio) Real Fantasies: Edward Steichen’s Advertising Photography. By Patricia Johnston. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Pp. xxii+351; illustrations, notes, appendix, index. $55. In his contribution to W. David Kingery’s Learning from Things: Method and Theory of Material Culture Studies (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), Joseph Corn lamented the recent trend among historians of technology to embrace theory while ignoring artifacts. Patricia Johnston’s award-winning monograph on Edward Steichen’s advertising photography—pronounced the Best Communication History Book for 1997 by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication—demonstrates a key point understood by Corn and other proponents of object analysis. In the hands of a skilled interpreter, the combination of documentary and material evidence—in this case, the “artifacts” consist of some 130 advertisements from popular magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar, all beautifully reproduced in color and in black and white—can augment our understanding of technology’s role in the transmission and reformation of cultural values. Johnston served her artifactual apprenticeship as a graduate student in art history at Boston University and a predoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery during the 1980s and as editor of exposure, a scholarly journal devoted to photographic history, in the early 1990s. As a result of her interdisciplinary background, Johnston’s work is informed by her knowledge of visual culture, American studies, American history, photo history, and cultural theory. A revised and significantly expanded version of Johnston’s dissertation, Real Fantasies examines Edward Steichen’s twenty-year career as America’s most successful commercial photographer, focusing primarily on his work in the interwar years [End Page 705] for the Manhattan-based J. Walter Thompson (JWT), one of the nation’s leading advertising agencies. Known today in scholarly circles for his art photography, Steichen earned this highbrow badge through his affiliation with Alfred Stieglitz’s famous 291 studio, his fashion work for Condé Nast’s Vogue and Vanity Fair, and his later career as director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art. Rather than rehashing this arty oeuvre, Johnston digs deep into advertising agency papers, museum archives, trade journals, and business literature to provide a close-up view of the politics of cultural production at the intersection of commerce and art. In doing so, Johnston makes a stellar contribution to the historical literature on American advertising and consumer society; there is no other text on this subject that so effectively uses images as evidence. Johnston arranges her book into ten chapters that overlap thematically, chronologically, and methodologically; her narrative proceeds through biography, stylistic matters, cultural analysis, and a postmodernist consideration of audience response. Many chapters consider how Steichen adapted his medium, navigated agency politics, and evolved his style to suit the needs of corporate clients through in-depth case studies of particular campaigns; his photos appeared in ads for Pebeco toothpaste, Fleischmann’s yeast, Kodak Verichrome film, Ivory soap, Cannon towels, Oneida silver plate, Simmons mattresses, Steinway pianos, and Matson Line ocean cruises. In each instance, Steichen bent over backward to accommodate JWT art directors and account representatives, who represented clients’ interests. Here we find no temperamental starving artist screaming for creative license but a smart businessman who recognized that a comfortable livelihood could be earned through corporate patronage. Johnston’s book is as much a biography of a corporate actor as it is a synopsis of a photographer’s commercial career. As Johnston argues, photography came to be the preferred medium for images in mass-circulation advertisements for cultural rather than technological reasons. The technical capability for photographic reproduction existed for decades before ad agencies adapted it for mass-circulation campaigns. By the 1920s, the cultural imperatives of consumer society impelled agencies to find new ways to reach women visually—and ad men saw photos as the key to female hearts, minds, and dollars. One example from Johnston’s many case studies demonstrates how agencies used persuasive photographs to unlock markets. In her chapter on Steichen’s work for the Jergens Company, a lotion manufacturer, the reader is struck...