Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T19:53:05.387Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rationalizing Consumption: Lejaren à Hiller and the Origins of American Advertising Photography, 1913–1924

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Elspeth H. Brown
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The reasons why photographic illustration was generally avoided by American print advertisers before 1913, even though halftone technology had made such illustration economically advantageous, have not been adequately explored. This article explains that art directors initially avoided the medium because of its slavish dependence on material reality. Photography offered too much detail; it seemed incapable of the abstraction or idealization necessary for “capitalist realism.” The change in this outlook can be dated from the work of Lejaren à Hiller, who, borrowing fine art aesthetics and techniques from pictorialist photography, established the medium as suitable for the complex visual and narrative strategies required by the social tableaux advertising of the period.

Type
Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , December 2000 , pp. 715 - 738
Copyright
Copyright © Enterprise and Society 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Bogart, Michele.Artists, Advertising, and the Border of Art, 1890-1960. Chicago,1995.Google Scholar
Doty, Robert.Photo-Secession: Steiglitz and the Fine-Art Movement in Photography. New York,1978.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Leonard W. Walter Dill Scott: First Industrial Psychologist. N.p.,1962.Google Scholar
Fox, Stephen.The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators. New York,1984.Google Scholar
Green-Lewis, Jennifer.Framing the Victorians: Photography and the Culture of Realism. Ithaca, N.Y.,1996.Google Scholar
Homer, William Innes.Alfred Steiglitz and photo-Secession. Boston,1983.Google Scholar
Hornung, Clarence P. The Advertising Designs of Walter Dorwin Teague. New York,1991.Google Scholar
Hornung, Clarence P., andJohnson, Fridolf.200 Years of American Graphic Art. New York,1976.Google Scholar
Johnston, Patricia.Real Fantasies: Edward Steichen’s Advertising Photography. Berkeley, Calif.,1997.Google Scholar
Jussim, Estelle.Visual Communication and the Graphic Arts: Photographic Technologies in the Nineteenth Century. New York,1983.Google Scholar
Laird, Pamela Walker.Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing. Baltimore, Md.,1998.Google Scholar
Leach, William.Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. New York,1993.Google Scholar
Lears, T. J. Jackson.Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America. New York,1994.Google Scholar
Marchand, Roland.Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940. Berkeley, Calif.,1985.Google Scholar
Marchand, Roland.Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business. Berkeley, Calif.,1998.Google Scholar
Marien, Mary Warner.Photography and Its Critics: A Cultural History, 1839-1900. Cambridge,England,1997.Google Scholar
Meikle, Jeffrey.Twentieth Century Limited: Industrial Design in America, 1925-1939. Philadelphia,1979.Google Scholar
Mott, Frank Luther.A History of American Magazines, 1885-1905. Cambridge,Mass.,1957.Google Scholar
Nye, David E.Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric. Boston,1985.Google Scholar
Olney, Martha L.Buy Now, Pay Later: Advertising, Credit, and Consumer Durables in the 1920s. Chapel Hill,N.C.,1991.Google Scholar
Orvell, Miles.The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940. Chapel Hill, N.C.,1989.Google Scholar
Robinson, Henry Peach.The Elements of a Pictorial Photograph. Bradford, England,1896.Google Scholar
Scott, Walter Dill.Influencing Men in Business: The Psychology of Argument and Suggestion. 1911;New York,1914.Google Scholar
Schudson, Michael.Advertising: The Uneasy Persuasion. New York,1986.Google Scholar
Shi, David.Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920. New York,1995.Google Scholar
Strasser, Susan.Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market. Washington, D.C.,1989.Google Scholar
Tedlow, Richard.New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America. New York,1990.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland.“The Photographic Message.” InImage/Music/Text, trans.Stephen Heath.New York,1977, pp.15–31.Google Scholar
Berman, Ronald.“Origins of the Art of Advertising.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 17, no. 3 (Fall1983):62.Google Scholar
Brown, Elspeth H.“The Prosthetics of Management: Motion Study, Photography, andthe Industrialized Body.” InArtificial Parts, Practical Lives, ed.Ott, Katherine,Serlin, David, andMinm, Stephen.New York,2001, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Harris, Neil.“Iconography and Intellectual History: The Half-Tone Effect.” InNew Dimensions in American Intellectual History, ed.Higham, John andConkin, Paul K..Baltimore, Md.,1979, pp.196–211.Google Scholar
Johnston, Patricia.“Edward Steichen’s Commercial Photography.” Exposure 26, no. 4 (1989):4–22.Google Scholar
Lynch, Edmund C. “Walter Dill Scott: Pioneer Industrial Psychologist.” Business History Review 42, no. 2 (Summer1968):149–70.Google Scholar
Peterson, Christian A.“American Arts and Crafts: The Photograph Beautiful 1895-1915.” History of Photography (Autumn1992):189–232.Google Scholar
Scott, Walter Dill.“The Psychology of Advertising.” Atlantic Monthly (Jan.1904):34.Google Scholar
Yochelson, Bonnie.“Clarence White, Peaceful Warrior.” InPictorialism into Modernism: The Clarence H. White School of Photography, ed.Marianne Fulton, .New York,1996.Google Scholar
Advertising and Selling.Google Scholar
Annual of Advertising Art in the U.S. 1921.Google Scholar
Annual of Advertising Art in the U.S. 1922.Google Scholar
Commercial Photographer. 1927.Google Scholar
Photo-Era Magazine.Google Scholar
Portrait. 1919.Google Scholar
Printed Salesmanship.Google Scholar
Printer’s Ink. Google Scholar
Printer’s Ink Monthly. 1919.Google Scholar
Third Annual of Advertising Art. 1924.Google Scholar
Hiller, Lejaren aà.Autobiographical typescripts.Hiller Archive, Visual Studies Workshop,Rochester, N.Y. Google Scholar
Olson, Charles Dalton. “Sign of the Star: Walter Dorwin Teague and the Texas Company, 1934-1937.” MA Thesis,Cornell University,1987.Google Scholar
Phillips, David. “Art for Industry’s Sake: Halftone Technology, Mass Photography, and the Social Transformation of American Print Culture, 1880-1920.” Ph.D. diss.,Yale University,1996.Google Scholar
“They Chose Photography,”, clipping about Hiller, Bourke-White, and Platt|Lynes, 1941, publication not noted,Hiller Archive, Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester,N.Y. Google Scholar