As mentioned before I'm reading Dawn to Decadence, a book by Barzan on the last 500 years of Western Culture. Up to page 435 or so now (of 800+), and it's taken a while because it isn't easy reading. We're entering the Romanticist Period, when the short-lived French Republic has gone away and people are recapturing some of the imagined grandeur of the past.

Barzan wrestles with the definition of Romanticist and finally concludes that of the many conflicting cliques and interests during the period, and the competing ideas and philosophies, they all belong, as it's the variety that defines the period, rather than one distinct idea or philosophy.

Back a bit I talked about regional differences in editorial fashion photography and how they may be converging, while individual differences among photographers may be diverging. Mentioned specifically were German vs. Italian vs. American styles. The definition problem that Barzan faced suggested another way to slice editorial fashion for a better look than regionalism.

Time. Obvious, you say? Well it wasn't all that obvious to me. Of course there are books on the changes in fashion photography over time, and there are retrospectives of individual photographers over time, and there are books on the changes to clothing itself over time...

In mathematics there are things called tests of correlation. In systems analysis, sensitivity models are used. Both indicate which variables have the most influence on particular results. (They aren't the same thing, but who cares?) The question that might be asked here is, "What has more influence on editorial fashion photography styles - period, or culture?"

Even that is too general a question, perhaps. There has never been a culture like the decadence of pre-WWII Berlin, unless it was Spanish Civil War Paris. Except in Paris artists were flocking to the cause and the tone of art during that period was more responsible.

And when it comes down to comparing the work of Horst or Penn to that of Ellen von Unwerth, how is that comparison to be done?

This post is kind of evolving itself into a wall. It ends up being a case where measurement doesn't work. Impressions of fashion photography must be largely subjective. Feelings evoked by work from particular times and places aren't directly comparable without instituting an artificial standard of measurement which would include devices like comparisons of histograms, number of nipples shown per thousand published photographs, and percentage of focused area of the image on fabric vs. faces or other parts. And those metrics won't ultimately say anything about the feel of the place or period.

Maybe a reverse approach is required. How about first we start with a huge number of photographs and arbitrary people sort them into stacks of pictures with a similar feel? Then the stacks are analyzed by place and period to see if any relationship exists. Then a correlation test is run on each stack to determine which influence is greatest. While we're at it, we could add more categories. Male vs. female photographers. Male vs. female models. Color vs. B&W. Number of figures in the image. Etc. Hmmm. This might be worth a dissertation.

Of course this was what Barzan was trying to do in his analysis of Romanticism. And the guy that wrote an 800+ page book covering a really long time gave up and lumped everything together. Me too. Another one for the "Too Hard" pile. At least at this time of night.

Or maybe, like Romanticism, it's the variety that defines the genre.

-Don