City News City White Analysis

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Photographed by John Rawlings, a contributing photographer for mass media empire, Conde Nast, the image pictured is part of an editorial in Vogue magazine released on May 1st, 1950. The single page spread titled “City News, City White” features models wearing dresses and accessories in a monochromatic palette of black and white, depicted in a lobby-like setting with silhouettes of passerby's and onlookers in the background (see also image 2). Known for being a photographer with a simple, and straight forward approach to fashion photography (Yohannan 2001, 1), Rawlings was one of the first editorial photographers who helped change the face of American fashion photography to encompass a truly “all-American look” as described by Holly Price …show more content…

In this particular image, a blurred silhouette of a male onlooker with his arms folded hovers in the background. This factor, though undermining the the subject in a subtle way, perhaps captures the intention of the photographer in highlighting societal views of gender roles in the postwar years. During which time, women left the jobs they held during or before the war, and returned to their pre-war roles of caring for the household. Many of these women let go of their dreams at a career and instead were more than happy with their “occupation” of being a housewife. These women were domesticated, often living their lives according to how advertisement and magazine imagery told them to. These often included images of “the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over a spotless kitchen floor.” (Friedan 1963, 18) This was the ideal of “true feminine fulfillment” which was how Betty Friednan described women during the post war years in her book titled The Feminine Mystique

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