The Feminine Awkward: Graceless Bodies and the Performance of Femininity in Fashion Photographs (By Eugenie Shinkle)

Eugenie Shinkle is Reader in photography at the Westminster school of Media art and Design and also she writes and lectures on fashion photography.

At first of the essay she states that fashion photography has been involved with uncomfortable and awkward poses recently which in her point of view this awkwardness is the history of fashion photography. There is no relation between awkward fashion photograph and different signifying practices; it just arises out of emotional responses.

External and internal forces shape the creation and experiment of the fashion photos. Internally awkwardness is included in relation between the model, camera and photographic frame but externally is the linked to the way of understanding of the photo by viewers and awkwardness is the way you understand the images look and their feels.

Eugenie points that in last decade of the 19 century models were taught how to walk, pose and gesture and they required acting like formality designed to repress emotions and individual personality. Totally they supposed to draw attention to their clothing that they wore rather than themselves.