This late 1970s manual describing “how to shoot a Ford car” was produced by J. Walter Thompson in an effort to streamline the production stages of its Ford campaigns. Written by John F. Dignam, an art director at JWT, the manual illustrates the techniques used to create the moods, rich colors and clean lines necessary for automotive ads. The collaborative work between photographer, art director, models, and studio crew are also exposed, particularly in Dignam’s detailing of the function and design of studio and set.
Dignam is not a photographer, and he clearly describes how closely art directors and photographers must collaborate in order to achieve consistent results. In this prescription, we are led to believe that photographers should not be trusted to experiment too much on set. Since Dignam and his staff had gone to so much trouble in configuring Ford’s look, later shoots must simply follow their lead. Ford’s current branding vocabulary and established aesthetic must be accurately reproduced in each shoot. Dignam reminds us that advertising photographs are complex hybrids of art and commerce; they embody both the studio and the factory. Cars, of course, exist in much the same way. Marketed as symbols of expression and taste, they are constructed within complex systems of technical and industrial control.
Photographers are paid - and well - to ply their trade to inert objects and situations. Their work is to transform the dead products of the factory into manifestations of desire and sensation. This manual begs us to ask if a single individual can be credited for the final ad image. Walter Herdeg’s comments from last week suggest that advertising photographers should be considered independent artists with their own unique vision: they alone are the creative force behind advertising photography. And while he recognizes that many professionals are involved in the production of ad images, he sees ads as independent works of art. Dignam’s manual challenges this argument and illustrates how ad agencies exert an opposite pressure on the creative process; one that pushes photographers and art directors to conform their work to the specific needs of clients and the parameters of the campaign.
Click here to download: How to Photograph a Ford Car. This manual is held in Duke Library’s Hartman Center John F. Dignam Collection.