The Irrealistic Characteristics Represented in Modern Fashion Photographs - Based on Nelson Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking -

Abstract

The modern fashion photograph is interpreted as diverse versions via individual perspectives and thus induces meaning as individuals compose diverse worlds. The researcher perceived the act of reading the significance of the modern fashion photograph from the aspect of the diverse worlds that the receivers comprise, and the researcher sought to highlight this with the ways of worldmaking, as in Nelson Goodman's concept of irrealism. This study sought the transitional structure of the significance of fashion photographs through the irrealism of Goodman and theoretically considered the way in which the worldmaking was organized. The study collected fashion photos shown in fashion magazines and fashion brand catalogs from 2005 to 2010 for a study of the precedent theories and a survey of photographic materials to select characteristics based on Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking. Goodman suggested the five ways of composition and decomposition, deformation, weighting, deletion and supplementation, and ordering as the ways of worldmaking. The composition and decomposition way leads to habit and perpetuation due to existing concepts or intimateness. It can also be considered that the composition and the decomposition way occur coincidentally with other ways due to the previous worlds in which users connote during the process through which the fashion photos were composed and decomposed, deformed, weighted, and ordered. Therefore, this study researched the four ways of composition and decomposition, deformation, weighting, and ordering by integrating them into fashion photos based on the five types of ways reviewed through a theoretical consideration.