Geographies of Style: Taiwan's Bridal Photography Empire
2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/08949460500374007
ISSN1545-5920
Autores Tópico(s)Cultural Industries and Urban Development
ResumoABSTRACT This article explores the cultural geography of a distinctive mode of bridal photography that developed in Taiwan beginning in the 1980s and by the 1990s had become virtually a universal cultural practice for weddings, cutting across the class and urban/rural social divisions. Characterized by large-scale high key portraits of brides and grooms dressed in a variety of finery, posed in numerous settings, and exuding varied emotional states, the photographs are a source of national pride for Taiwan as they are famous throughout the region. Using theories of competitive consumption, imagined community, and time-space compression, the article explores ways in which Taipei's bridal industry commands space and constructs place. Notes Field research was funded by grants from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and the American Council of Learned Societies/Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Fellowship Selection Committee with funds provided by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. A National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and a Mellon Dissertation Fellowship at Yale University provided funding for initial write-up of the research on which this article is based. I presented parts of this study at a session organized by Roy Richard Grinker for the 1998 American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings in which Laurel Kendall provided useful criticism. I thank Sidney Cheung, who organized the IUAES session on wedding photography in East Asia that resulted in the present form of this article. I romanize Mandarin terms in pinyin, though pinyin is not the system of romanization in use in Taiwan, where romanizations are frustratingly inconsistent. I give common place names such as Taipei and Taichung, using the spellings in most common use in maps of Taiwan. Personal names and identifying markers have been changed to protect the privacy of the women and men among whom I conducted research and to whom I am most thankful. Xiezhen is the Mandarin pronunciation of the Japanese term for photography. Until the mass production of bridal gowns for the US market was moved to the PRC in the early 1990s, a high percentage of American bridal gowns were made in Taiwan. Today, Taiwanese investors own many of the bridal gown production facilities in China; gown design and business contracting for mass production occur in Taiwan. For Taiwanese consumers, European labels command higher status because U.S. bridal gowns are decidedly local. Additional informationNotes on contributorsBonnie Adrian Bonnie Adrian is Social Sciences Core Lecturer at the University of Denver, U.S.A. and author of Framing the Bride: Globalizing Beauty and Romance in Taipei's Bridal Industry [2003]. E-mail: badrian@du.edu
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