Picturing the Woman-Child

Rezensionen / Stimmen

This fascinating book centres on a paradox in visual culture: why do contemporary messages of female empowerment sit alongside a proliferation of images of childlike femininities? Examining magazine fashion spreads over 25 years, Picturing the Woman-Child offers a compelling analysis of four figures and the ways they are understood. * Rosalind Gill, City, University of London, UK * Morna Laing's nuanced and layered analysis of childlike femininities in fashion imagery is eye-opening. She weaves together a compelling theoretical, historical, and visual analysis, offering the reader a new perspective on and a deeper understanding of these pervasive cultural depictions of women. * Jennifer Farley Gordon, independent researcher, writer and curator, USA * Morna Laing's Picturing the Woman-Child is essential reading for anyone seeking insight into fashion photography and the politics of the gaze. * Valerie Steele, Director of The Museum at FIT, New York, USA * Picturing the Woman-Child is an elegantly textured study of the complex history of childlike femininities, sharply observing how the concept has been centralized in contemporary European fashion media. Morna Laing offers us scholarly exploration at its finest, an analysis at once beautiful, poetic and sophisticated. This is a much-anticipated study that demystifies the cultural imagery of childlike femininities and deconstructs their allures that have long attracted artists, fashion practitioners, men, and, perhaps surprisingly, women themselves. A delightful book which will become central to our thinking on femininities. * Masafumi Monden, University of Sydney, Australia *