Photography and Modern Icons

Book excerpt: This volume analyzes how six protagonists of culture, between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, built their media image by exploiting the innovations brought about by the invention of photography. By exalting the cult of personality, eccentric narcissism and the nascent mass communication, they made the photographic portrait the tool through which they could become celebrities and, at the same time, found fashion and clothing styles that are still of reference today. From De Mérode’s stereotype of beauty to Baudelaire’s total black dandyism, and from Schwarzenbach’s lesbian-chic style to Nijinsky’s eroticizing exoticism, the book provides detailed insights into the life and work of various protagonists, always keeping in the background the cultural and artistic context of European Modernism. It will particularly appeal to scholars and students of contemporary art, the history of photography, fashion studies and mass communications.