Rethinking fashion photography: reconstructing identities, decolonising bodies and resistance in postcolonial Morocco

Abstract

Fashion photography in Moroccan magazines, newspapers and social media finds a favourable environment to incubate, develop and theorise on Moroccan cultural identity. Such areas of fashion photography have become sites of the female body, dream and fashion. In this paper, I investigate different articulations of postcolonial fashion critique by focusing on photography as a space where conflicting ideologies occur, where cultural encounters escalate different agendas and different ideas about gender, nationhood and cultural identity. Deploying Foucault’s concept of docile bodies, this paper reads fashion photography as a space of women bodies exposed to different structures of power, ready to be ‘manipulated, shaped, and trained’ (135–136). Affected by the history of colonial domination and the postcolonial condition, fashion photography emphasises not only the process of alterity by contributing to the reservoir of produced oriental fantasies but also fosters and frustrates western imperial hegemony. This paper examines the transition of fashion discourse from traditional paper-based media to the digital realm, with a particular emphasis on the perpetuation of hegemonic narratives within the fashion industry. It explores the role of fashion photography as a medium through which these discourses are conveyed, specifically in its endeavour to redefine Moroccan cultural identity.

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