Hold That Pose: Visual Culture in the Late-Nineteenth-Century Spanish Periodical (review)

Lou Charnon-Deutsch suggests that today's fascination with visual culture is historically rooted in modernity while preceding 20^th-century phenomena such as film, television and, more recently, the Internet. As the author convincingly argues, it was during the late 1800s when advances in photomechanical reproduction enabled periodicals to capitalize on the urge by an increasingly large bourgeoisie to be informed about local, national and world events. As a result, the encyclopedic goals of the Romantic illustrated press—epitomized in Ramón de Mesonero Romanos' Semanario Pintoresco Español—gave way to other means of combining text and image aimed at a more mundane, voyeuristic and ultimately consumerist audience.

In chapter one of her book, entitled "Racial Fetishism in the Late Nineteenth-Century Illustrated Maganize," Charnon-Deutsch examines the Orientalist genre portraits focusing on exotic women, many of whom were adorned with coins. Going beyond psychosexual explanations, the author contends that these women's appeal to a male gaze was indicative of Spain's status as a former colonial power striving to maintain some of its hegemony amidst a lagging economy.

Chapter two, "From Engraving to Photoengraving: Cross-Cut Technologies," traces the evolution whereby the implementation of photomechanical technologies in periodicals such as La Ilustración Española y Americana and Blanco y Negro shifted their readership from the moneyed to the middle classes. The possibility of transferring a photograph directly into the pages of a paper or a magazine began to alter also the relationship between written text and image in favor of the latter.

Chapter three is devoted to "Torcuato Luca de Tena's Blanco y Negro and Spain's move toward a mass media." A weekly launched in May 1891, Blanco y Negro's success is to be attributed to a combination of moderate prices, the use of the aforementioned new photoengraving techniques, and a festive tone seeking to trivialize class divisions. Owing to these features, the magazine was soon to eclipse its most direct rivals such as the once powerful and more elite Ilustración Española y Americana.

Finally, chapter four deals with the graphic depictions of the 1898 Spanish-American War as they appeared in the illustrated press in both Spain and the United States. Chief among the author's conclusions is the realization that, save for a few exceptions, the media clung to their country's political agendas by inflaming the patriotism of their people in the most chauvinistic terms. Support of each nation's foreign policies included not only the exaltation of time-honored national virtues—Spanish honor on the one hand, U.S. humanitarian expansionism on the other—but also, and mostly, the deployment of satirical cartoons poking fun at the enemy.

Hold that Pose exemplifies the extent to which the field of cultural studies can indeed expand our knowledge of 19^th-century Spain in a way that traditional scholarship may no longer be able to do. The book's methodological rigor, along with a thoroughly extensive research drawn from various disciplines, attests to the critical acumen of an author who is clearly on top of her game. Lastly, and for the ones who believe that style in scholarship matters as much as in the creative arts, Charnon-Deutsch's elegant prose should once and for all put to rest the absurd notion that linguistic transparency is incompatible with intellectual depth.