Walter Herdeg. Photographis. Zurich: Graphis Press, 1966.
Walter Herdeg, founder and editor of Graphis and Photographis. Celebrated graphic artist, designer, editor, and writer. 1908 - 1995
The Following is an excerpt of Walter Herdeg's 1966 opening salvo to Photographis, a new annual featuring the best of international advertising photography. Herdeg wastes no time and immediately argues unequivocally that advertising photography is a powerful force in fine art. He goes on to say that commercial photographers, critical assent or no, are artists of the highest order. He believes they lead the arts in technical and creative innovation and represent a powerful force in contemporary visual culture. Doing this, Herdeg elevates the creative face of the profession. He enlarges commercial photography's status in postwar art and voices frustration felt by many commercial photographers of the time: the unyielding tension between art making and commercial enterpirse.
Introduction
An experiment made by the Reader’s Digest some years ago has since become a by-word. A number was issued from which all advertising had been expunged and the public reacted with a cry of disapproval, an avalanche of protests that was far in excess of anything the publishers had expected and for a time set them back on their heels.
The proof that a periodical, of whatever type and circulation, loses interest when it is stripped of its advertising, estranges its readers and imperils its own existence naturally provoked a good deal of discussion on either side of the Atlantic. Numbers of writers launched out, under the banner of humanism, into varied warnings and homilies about the hydra of publicity. What they advanced were, however, less ideas than prejudices and humours. They overlooked the fact that the complex and multifarious problems presented by the rising tide of advertising - problems which certainly exist, though not only on the plane of literary moralizing - have already been analysed by the various branches of the human sciences, which have pointed out their abuses, defined remedies and sometimes specified the conditions under which these are likely to be effective.
Advertising of course concerns society as a whole, and it would be refreshing to hear clear-sighted contemporaries asking the real questions more often than one does today. But to make advertising the scapegoat of our disorientation, the victim of our prejudices in the face of the myths of our century, can only help those who are prepared to put their trust in vain nostalgia for an allegedly golden past. As it is, advertising is a phenomenon that cannot be overlooked and must be faced realistically. In its outward manifestations and particularly in its printed expressions it also has some connection with art. Minor art, if you like, but the fact remains that it plays an interesting part in modern aesthetics alongside of art proper.
Historically considered, commercial photography was first used around 1860, when it was still being engraved on wood. But the scale of its employment for this purpose was infinitesimal compared with the other incipient uses of photography in the press and in printed matter. While the discover of process engraving in 1886 and of photogravure in 1896 boosted photography at the expense of drawing as a means of representing reality (sic0, advertising photography continued to mark time and failed to win the place it seemed destined for. It is true that this fact was also due to a constellation of social and economic factors, which in addition condemned it to a degree of mediocrity hardly anywhere so pronounced as in the printed matter of that era. The stagnation and poverty of the advertising photography of those times can therefore be put down to environmental influences and the prevailing economic system. It has evolved much faster in the course of the last twenty years. This is a result of the upheavals brought by the twenties in social, intellectual, artistic and technical domains. The time was now propitious, and photography resumed its utilitarian function, but at a level of qality never previously attained. At this juncture the part played by the Bauhaus of Weimar and Dessau between 1919 and 1928 calls for some comment. Without the research of J. Albers, H. Bayer, Moholy-Nagy, X. Schawinsky, O. Schlemmer and others, all the progress made towards syncretism in the arts, all the advances in the field of graphic art and industrial design and all the achievements in the way of the conception, realization and “creative” use of the photographic image would most probably have been held up for many years.
It was not by accident that the European Herbert Bayer won the first prize offered for advertising photography - a rare distinction at the time - by the Art Center of New York in 1931. His entry happened to be a cover for the Bauhaus magazine.
All artistic and technological advances really come at the right moment, for they need a favourable climate and a raison d’etre to enable them to emerge. They are always a response to outer conditions, and they are successful only in so far as they satisfy a need. This is exactly what happened to advertising photography when the mystique of production and consumption took possession of our civilization. In the last two decades its field has been extended and now embraces all the principal sectors of trade and industry, producing an array of specialization within what is itself a form of specialization. Many professionals devote themselves mainly or even exclusively to a single branch of illustration:L foods or household articles, watches, cars or other types of merchandise. But before looking more closely, we should perhaps define the scope of advertising photography in general.
Obviously all photography might in certain circumstances be used for advertising. The only condition is that its content should suit the form and spirit of the message to be conveyed. This principle was applied from the first, and it is still the rule in tourist advertising and calendars. But this relates to the stage of actual use. We must perhaps first consider the more specific aspects of advertising photography and how they affect its aesthetics and sometimes even reduce the participation of the photographer to a minimum. Advertising photography might be circumscribed by its intentional, pre conceived and planned character. Its existence depends on its function, which is to promote sales, but it would not survive if it could not sell itself. This in a way sets it apart from other photographic activities, and in a way puts it on the same basis.
Having thus stated its intention, we must go on to the matter of preconception; and this is a Gordian knot which only a small minority of photographers have succeeded in cutting. It is significant that a man of the importance of David Ogilvy, himself a convinced supporter of photography for advertising, should have expressed himself as follows: “As in all areas of advertising, substance is more important than form. If you have a remarkable idea for a photograph, it does not require a genius to click the shutter. If you haven’t got a remarkable idea, not even Irving Penn can save you.” No doubt the eyeshade of Baron Wrangel personifying Hathaway shirts, the bead of Commander Whitehead that has become identified with Schweppes or the remarkable campaign for Puerto Rico (the photographer, Elliott Erwitt, is mentioned in the latter, while in the others no name is indicated) are successes that are now recognized as models. But does this prove that a photographer would have been less inspired if an appeal had been made to his imagination? This question may be inopportune and captious, but it expresses the indefinable feeling of frustration that dogs so many in the profession. Since they are normally allowed no initiative in deciding what might be photographed - what David Ogilvy calls the ‘idea’ - and have only a relative degree of freedom in the treatment of what is photographed, it is perhaps understandable that photographers are not particularly well disposed towards the present visualizers of advertising messages.
However, this aspect of the question should not be exaggerated. Advertising agencies being what they are - more and more complex and hierarchical institutions with their functional requirements, their laws of action and their standards of efficiency - it is better if photographers reconcile themselves to their position as furnishers of certain services. This is not incompatible with the dignity of their profession, nor of their talent. In any case, Sisyphus has too much on his hands to have time for the troubles of Tantalus.
The “planned” character of advertising photography does not depend only on the material side of the work. The intellectual and artistic faculties of the photographer again come into play in advance. Whether it is simply a matter of photographing some prosaic article of daily consumption or of exalting a product and turning in into a symbol, it is always a task that involves choice, exclusion and combination. A constant sifting process must take place. Even the preparatory phase - placing and ordering the objects, creating the situation - takes more imagination than one might think, and the actual shot is only one instant after many others. A number of diverse, heterogeneous and discontinuous operations finally produce the photograph, the visual pattern which, combined with the pattern of the text, will constitute the advertising message. This said, it is essential to underline, a work in which so many contributions come from the United States, the large part American photography has played in all fields, and especially in advertising, since the end of the war. Having evolved in favourable surroundings in which outdated cultural and artistic prejudices are virtually non-existent, and in an era of exceptional economic prosperity, it has had almost unlimited scope. Its experiments and new departures, and for that matter even its weaknesses, have exercised a powerful influence on other countries and it is not surprising that much of the work done in Europe and elsewhere reflects this. It should be added that commerce and industry, and the advertisers who serve them, today see eye to eye in matters of advertising photography, whether they are domiciled in New York, London, Paris, Hamburg, Milan or Tokyo. The pictures shown here, however, prove that the sensibilities of most photographers are not attuned to the same register.