Alison Bancroft: Fashion, Lens, Mirror, Self.
Queen Mary’s, University of London
The paper will use Jacques Lacan’s theory of The Mirror Stage as a means of reading fashion and fashion photography. It will move beyond the somewhat prosaic conclusion that fashion is either an example of feminine illogicality or the inevitable product of capitalist excess. The Mirror Stage is a stage in every sense, both a phase and a performance arena in which the misrecognition and alienation that are fundamental to the self are constantly enacted and re-enacted. There is a disjuncture between the perception of wholeness that we see in the mirror and the lived experience of the self as fragmented, contingent and disorganised. Jacques Lacan’s theory of the Mirror Stage is a means of understanding the ways in which fashion contributes towards the constitution of a self that is fundamentally alienated. This disjuncture is predicated on visuality. The paper, then, will consider fashion photography as an exemplar of the misrecognition that is central to the constitution of the self. The idea that mirror identification can take place between the subject and almost any image, is in my view key to understanding the operation of fashion photography, and makes possible a range of readings of fashion photography that are stem from the idea of the Mirror Stage. I will use Lacanian psychoanalysis to argue that the relationship between the viewer of fashion photography and the photography itself is such that the visualisation of clothing is the visualisation of ourselves.