Shooting
from the Hip. Photography, Masculinity,
and Postwar America
by Patricia Vettel-Becker
The University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
and London, 2005
199 pp., 36 b/w illus. Paper,$19.95
ISBN: 0-8166-4301-6.
Reviewed by Jan Baetens
jan.baetens@arts.kuleuven.be
Sometimes, the best books are the simplest
ones, and Patricia Vettel-Beckers
study on the remasculinization of photography
in the postwar years (from 1945 till the
late fifties, when the dominant social
role of photography is once and for all
taken over by the new medium of television)
is a perfect illustration of this virtue.
Starting from the idea that masculinity
is in crisis in the immediate postwar
years, first because of the difficult
reintegration of the often very unheroic
veterans to their work and home place,
second because of the even more difficult
reduction of the responsibilities and
independence of the often very heroic
women who had been obliged to take their
mens places during the war, Patricia
Vettel-Becker analyzes the transformations
in the field of photography as one of
the many strategies developed by a male
dominated culture to reinforce or re-establish
traditional roles of masculinity, and
to remasculinize society as a whole. The
very strength of this wonderfully written
book (and please note that this is not
just the usual compliment the reviewer
gives to a book that pleased him) is that
it sticks to this one single hypothesis
or perspective, while managing to reinterpret
and to restructure completely a very broad
field (and even two, since Patricia Vettel-Becker
does not only provide a new analysis of
postwar photography in America, she also
offers new insights in the cultural theory
of that place and those times by connecting
photography to several other fields such
as, for instance, cinema (film noir),
politics (McCarthy), and the art and gender
debate (in this sense, it might appear
very fruitful to establish a relationship
between this book and Andreas Huyssens
theory on the feminization of lower arts
during the pop era in the early sixties).
What makes this book not only so attractive,
but also so dramatically convincing is
twofold. First, there is, of course, the
newness of its basic stance, which helps
to produce a new vision of what we thought
we knew almost by heart. The rereading
of Robert Franks The Americans,
a book that Patricia Vettel-Becker juxtaposes
with Bruce Davidsons work on a Brooklyn
gang, is a paramount example of the very
innovative character of this study. But
the same remark can be made for the playmate
and sports photography of the fifties,
which the author rereads by
putting
them together.
Second, there is the broadness of the
authors scope. Even more eye-opening
than the analysis of Robert Frank, William
Klein, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Weegee,
and many, many others (some of them unknown
to a modern audience, which is also a
great advantage and pleasure too), is
the authors study of the different
genres that organized the work of photographers
in those years as well as her very clear
and intelligent rereading of the institutional
context of the ways pictures were shown,
in magazines, in books, in museums Shooting
from the Hip, does not just focus on some
isolated authors or some lesser known
practices, it really tackles the whole
field, all the genres, and almost all
the great photographers of that period.
In each case, Patricia Vettel-Becker manages
to put forward the gender aspect of a
work, a genre, a context, both at the
level of the pictures themselves (the
author is a wonderful close reader) and
at that of the framing discourse and the
cultural practices surrounding and including
photography. Patricia Vettel-Becker is
able to explain major shifts in photography,
such as for instance the transition from
prewar documentary photography to postwar
magazine street photography. Gender, and
the author is, as far as I know, the very
first to stress this point, plays here
a crucial role: in postwar years, documentary
photography is being considered feminine
for its appeal to emotion and its possible
link to suspect ideologies (in the McCarthy
era, collaboration with the enemy was
a form of surrendering of weak
and soft bodies to foreign
seduction), whereas the depoliticized
street photography enabled the photographer
to present his work in terms of battle,
struggle, and conquest. Moreover, the
emergence of photojournalism is linked
with gender form other viewpoints too.
Patricia Vettel-Becker studies very convincingly
the gendered structure of power relationships
within the world of photojournalism (with
the hypermasculine photographer feeling
diminished by the script of themostly
femininepicture editor or
researcher, both being under the final
supervision of thesystematically
masculineeditor in chief).
She also emphasizes the tension between
the art world (which was considered feminine)
and that of the harsh press or product
photography (which enabled the male photographer
to enact his role of breadwinner and independent
free-lancer), a tension visible in the
policy of the MOMA (it has not been stressed
enough, and Patricia Vettel-Becker does
it wonderfully) that "The Family
of Man" is also, and maybe in the
first place, a reaction against fine arts
photography, or in the choice made by
some photographers of the book as a new
medium for the exhibition of their work
(to publish in a book meant to ignore
the feminized museum and art world, among
other things).
In short, a refreshing and very important
book. A major contribution also to the
use of gender theory of photography, bringing
to the fore a feminist rereading of the
canon as well as the mainstream of a period,
instead of focusing on repressed
authors and practices or on their rediscovery.