Photography, Publicity and Representation

Abstract

Travelling around any big city today it is almost impossible to escape photographic representations of performance. These are primarily images of performance created and distributed for publicity purposes: found on posters and billboards, on the street, in shop windows, outside theatres and on public transport. As John Berger writes

In the cities in which we live, all of us see hundreds of publicity images every day of our lives. No other kind of image confronts us so frequently. In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages … The publicity image belongs to the moment. We see them as we turn a page, as we turn a corner, as a vehicle passes us. (1972: 129–30)

In this performance photography is being employed in a manner little different from the use of photographs in other forms of advertising, utilising what is the medium’s most technically distinct feature — its supreme reproducibility. Indeed, the ubiquity of these images makes it difficult to imagine performance disappearing, with its promotional dissemination meaning it is represented as, and even before (as shall be discussed later in this chapter), it comes into existence. Noting this public prominence and availability of performance photography, as with other forms of advertising, is significant beyond its mere ubiquity. Unlike the other forms of performance representation considered in this book (including videos and reviews), performance photography comes into our consciousness unbidden and uninvited. As Berger suggests, we see such images without effort or choice upon our part.