Fashioning Mass Modernism - Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and Photography in the American Fashion Magazine, 1929–1968

Aug 27, 2026

Fashioning Mass Modernism examines how American fashion magazines shaped and professionalized fashion photography while introducing more avant-garde imagery to a broad readership. Using archival working documents and the magazine page’s original context, the dissertation studies collaborative production at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue from 1929 to 1968. It tracks major stylistic and technological transformations, including the shift from illustration to black-and-white photography, the arrival of color reproduction, and the influence of small-format cameras. Each change reflects editors’ pursuit of novelty through images and language that continually reshape fashion’s public meaning.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages242

Reading Time10 h 10 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Fashion as a photographic genre and the modernist challenge

Research question and archival approach

Scope: Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue (1929–1968)

Collaborative production and professionalization

Networks of creators and publishers

Shifts in style and technology

Stylistic and technological transformations

From illustration to black-and-white photography

Introduction of color photography reproduction

Small-format cameras and changes in location and look

FASHIONING MASS MODERNISM: HARPER’S BAZAAR, VOGUE, AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE AMERICAN FASHION MAGAZINE, 1929–1968 by KAITLIN BOOHER A dissertation submitted to the School of Graduate Studies Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Art History Written under the direction of Andrés Mario Zervigón And approved by _____________________________________ _____________________________________ ______________________________________ ______________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2023 © 2023 Kaitlin Booher All rights reserved. Abstract Fashioning Mass Modernism: Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and Photography in the American Fashion Magazine Kaitlin Booher Dissertation Director: Andrés Zervigón Fashion is a genre of the photographic that is too easily dismissed because it challenges core tenants of the medium’s modernist identity, even for photographers themselves. The process is inherently collaborative, rather than the creation of a sole artist. It is highly subjective and crafted, rather than a recording of the world. Although museum exhibition catalogs and fashion magazines themselves have published broad surveys ofthe category, there has yet to be a critical approach that attends to fashion photography’s business practices or theorizes its role in visual culture. What insight could be brought to such photographs through archival working documents surrounding their making and closer attention to their original context of the magazine page? To answer this, this dissertation studies the role played by American fashion magazines in professionalizing fashion photography and bringing relatively avant-garde imagery to amass audience. Specifically, it examines the networks of people who created and published editorial photographs at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue between 1929, when Vogue invested significantly in photographic technology and modernist design and 1968, when the genre began experiencing a fundamental transformation away from its earlier idioms. This window in the middle of the twentieth century served as a cultural watershed for the role of fashion imagery in American history. In addition to outlining the collaborative production of fashion photographs, each chapter focuses on a period of stylistic and technological change, including the shift from illustration to black-and-white photography, the introduction of color photography reproduction, and the impact of small-format cameras on the location and look of fashion photographs. Each shift was driven by magazine producers’ restless search for novelty through images and language that would surprise and delight their readers with every issue, giving form to the notion that fashion is constant change. Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to my committee for their support throughout the research and writing of this dissertation. It was an honor and a pleasure to work under the guidance of Dr. Andrés Mario Zervigón, whose insight and enthusiasm for the field are a model for any photo historian. Dr. Susan Sidlauskas and Dr. Jane Sharp encouraged me to pursue this topic and gave me the tools to do so through their different approaches to modernism. Dr. Elspeth Brown’s scholarship on 20th century American fashion photographers and the history of modeling laid the groundwork for this project, and I am so grateful for her feedback and ideas about my research. I wrote this dissertation thanks to the generous support of many institutions. Grants from Rutgers University’s School of Graduate Studies, the Barbara Mitnick Fund, the Mary Bartlett Cowdrey Fund, and the Mellon Foundation enabled preliminary and dissertation research at archives, libraries, and museums in Paris, London, and New York. A 2020–21 Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art allowed me to research works in the Met’s collection and

FAQs

What research question drives the dissertation?

It asks what new insight fashion photographs gain when studied alongside archival working documents and the magazine page’s original context of production and viewing.

Which magazines and time period are studied?

The dissertation focuses on American fashion magazines Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue between 1929 and 1968, spanning a period of major change in photography practices.

How does the dissertation explain changes in fashion photography?

It links stylistic and technological shifts—such as moving from illustration to black-and-white, adding color reproduction, and adopting small-format cameras—to magazines’ ongoing search for novelty in images and language.

Aug 27, 2026

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