Thinking fashion photographs through queer affect theory

Abstract

Abstract In this article, I suggest that the commonly used approaches to the study of fashion photographs could be fruitfully enriched by juxtaposing them with affect theory. I conduct a theoretical investigation of the benefits that affect theory, and in particular the strand articulated by queer theorists, may bring to the reflections on fashion photographs. I do so in a twofold way: by intertwining traditional visual analysis with an affective reading grounded in corporeal experience; and by illustrating how the queer affects circulating in fashion photographs might foreground issues of gender and sexuality and unfold possibilities of queer attachment. Two very different case studies, a photo spread by Corinne Day for The Face and the Gucci Pre-Fall 2016 advertising campaign, are chosen to explore how a specific affective register, i.e. ‘flat affect’, embedded in the images, might open up possibilities for envisioning queer aesthetic futures.