PUBLICITY IS GLAMOUR (from John Berger's lecture “Way of seeing”)
In the world we're livin' in we are all surrounded by images of an alternative way of life: everywhere, everytime. Basically a promised of better life. This is publicity.
In more recent times commercial paintings have been substituted by commercial photography.
Often in commercial photography we can find parks and gardens like in oil paintings of the past but nowadays the models substitute the goddness.
At the base of the concept of “glamour” (and so of “publicity”) we can find the social envy, infact, without it, glamour couldn't exist.
Oil paintings and publicity have a lot in common infact sometimes the first ones are used in advertising to give prestige. Moreover publicity very often refers to master pieces of the history of art and, most of all, it continues the tradition of oil painting.
Like oil painting, that indeed is very tactile, photography tries to render out the things represented more tangible.
The strategy of publicity is to make you think that “you are what you have”, the same happened with the oil paintings infact they were used to make people know that a specified family, for instance, had a lot of richness. They were a mean to communicate “look how much I'm rich”.
The message of commercial photography is that if we buy something our life and our private relationships will be better, even though, indeed, we'll be poorer. But we can have an object only if we have money. Infact publicity works on anxieties about money.
Advertising suggests that we are inadequate as we are, but it consoles us with a promise of a dream and make our mind imagine a better life.
Often, in the magazines, this unreality is compared with reality so you can find two adjoint pages where on the first one you have the publicity that means richness, social elevation and on the next page you can find the raw reality of poor country where there is the war, for instance. There is a relevant disconnection between these pages, but the combination is very significant because the messages is clear “this (the war) happens to some other” and “this (the dream offered by pubblicity) happens to you”.
The comparison between these pages is in any case uncomprehensible that's because we're living in a mad society.
But now the point is: can publicity be considered a form of art? Yes, in my opinion.
There are some (very) famous photographers that could shook up the way to promote commercial objects and we're gonna talk about them in the next paragraphs.
THE IRRIVERENCY OF DAVID LACHAPPELE
David LaChapelle (Fairfield, march 11th, 1963) is a post – modern and commercial photographer that creates surrealistic pictures.
He attended the North Carolina School of the Arts and later the School of Art of New York.
His artistic father is somehow Andy Warhol that offered him his first incharge for the magazine “Interview”. He worked a lot, and still works, for many magazines such as Vanity Fair, GQ, Vogue, The Face, Arena Homme and Rolling Stone.
His first photographic book is entitled “LaChapelle Land” and makes know the photographer world wide for his eccentric style.
His next book is “Hotel LaChappelle” that made him successful.
His style is somehow original, colorful, glamour, odd, freak, byzarre, fake, trasgressive, baroque, eccessive, irriverent, sexualist, sometime vulgar and dreamy.
The pictures denounce the contemporary obsession, the relationship with the pleasure, the wellness and the superflous. The nudes are aggressive and insolent.
In his pictures he's not interested to represent a world of tragedy, desperation and lack of hope. For him fashion is fun.
At the same time we have a social purpose and he's trying to sell us something. So this is the innovation: the public denounce and the publicity mixed together.
Often in his work we have some references to the history of art like “Deluge” (2006 – see below) that is inspired by Sistine Chapel. Since he was young, LaChappele, felt himself inspired by Michelangelo that considers the top of the pop artist because his images are understandable by anyone.
His photography makes the impossible, be possible in a dreamy and eccentric context.
We can say he shook up the way to create pictures for the publicity inventing his own style that brings his signature.
He works like he was a director. Every detail is studied meticulously.
Often the subjects of his “folly” are famous actors or singers that become caricatures of themselves like Courtney Love, Pamela Anderson, Amanda Lepore, Madonna, Tupac Shakur, Elizabeth Taylor, Uma Thurman, but also Hillary Clinton, Lance Armstrong and David Beckham.
He was influenced and inspired by Andy Warhol infact his photography is defenitely “pop” but at the beginning his photography was black and white, when he found out he hadn't HIV he started to use an explosion of color.
He considered the pop art like something that could be understand by everyone.
David LaChappelle works so much with the publicity: in the past he relized advertising for Tommy Hilfiger, Nokia, Lavazza, L'Oréal, Diesel, H&M e Burger King.
THE SOCIAL CRITICISM OF OLIVIERO TOSCANI
Oliviero Toscani (Milan, 1942) is an italian photographer mainly known for his photographic works for the italian brand “Benetton” but also for “Chanel”, “Esprit”, “Fiorucci”, “Prénatal” that turn him famous as a photographer for publicity.
His way to photograph is often very strong, trasgressive, scandalous, purely real because even in the publicity he tries to communicate a social interest message.
Very often he was up to be censored for his strong pictures.
He tried to make up with the critics with the picture of a newborn baby, but it was a failure because the image was too shoking to be exposed publicly. It remains one of the most censored images of the history of photography.
His picture about a black woman feeding a white baby is probably his best known picture even if the black american communities have strongly criticized it.
He's also famous (and very criticized) for “No–l–ita” a picture about an anorexic model which aim was to sensitize the public opinion about the problem of anorexia.
For Benetton he realized the campaign “Unhate” portraing politicians and religious chiefs kissing each other. Of course Pope Ratzinger threatened to denouce the brand that had to retire the pictures in the next 24h from the launching.
“Benetton” incharged him to shoot prisoners sentenced to death, but the brand was denounced by Missouri state and sentenced to pay 50.000$. This damaged a lot the brand that had to close 50 shops in all the country and the collaboration with Olivieri was interrupted.
The photographer encountered the disappointment of the Pope for his picture portraiting a gay couple with a baby. The image had an enormous success in the States.
He also fought against the violence on women shooting two kids, a boy and a girl; the meaning of the work was a critic to the families that sometimes are not able to give a good education to the children thus they could generate violence.
Oliviero Toscani is deeply different from David LaChapelle, the second one is very glamour and treats shallow topics in a fancy world, whilst the first one in each picture that he shoots, treats very strong subjects and themes shoking the public. In this sense he could be considered as innovetor as the american photographer. Both are genial, trasgressive, direct and they use a strong visual language like no others have used in advertising pictures before.
