lifestyle Photography
Lifestyle Photography is a photographic genre designed to resemble Reportage but where every detail of the image has been subtly orchestrated to promote a specific commercial message. It therefore places an ingenuous facade upon a sophisticated advertising tool. Every detail of the lifestyle photograph from the choice of model to the cut of the shirt, to the details on the horizon is calculated to present the experience to maximum advantage.
We judge the success of a lifestyle photograph in two ways: Firstly by the credibility of the image ie. how convincingly real does this scene feel? Secondly, how appealing is the world it portrays?
So there remains at the heart of the genre a constant tension between authenticity and allure.
In order to feel authentic lifestyle photographs usually depict common scenes of everyday life. Often the most seemingly banal moments such as a person daydreaming or checking their phone can work very effectively as advertising images as they ape our own experience. They are deeply familiar and, as a result, convincing.
The Origins of Lifestyle Photography
This central conceit can be traced historically to famous reportage photographs whose enduring appeal was that they gave seemed to give an insight into the wider forces of history only for their strict authenticity to appear more nuanced over time.
In Jimmy Sime’s classic 1937 photograph ‘Toffs and Toughs’ two schoolboys from Harrow School are photographed outside Lords Cricket Ground wearing formal school dress-uniform including top hats and canes. They are being mocked by three boys from the local school in the plain clothes worn by working-class children in the 1930s. The shot first appeared the next day in the left-wing ‘News Chronicle’ under the heading ‘Every picture tells a story’ and its fame as a kind of diagram of the British social class system grew. It works so well because standing outside Lords waiting from their parents the ‘Toffs’ are shorn of the insulating milieu of the adult world and corralled into the same frame as their social ‘inferiors’ and being of a similar age the absurdity of their costumes becomes apparent.
The photograph is also well composed, the angularity of the Toff outfits surrounded by a luxurious amount of space and awkward attempts at nonchalance contrasts with the tight group of three ‘Toughs’ standing next to each other and giggling. The success of this image was such that journalists in the early 21st century traced the history of the models and discovered something that once you know becomes obvious. Jimmy Sime had asked the Toughs to crowd in tight to be photographed whereas the unsuspecting Toffs genuinely were just trying to get home. Once you know this it instantly looks half-staged. The Toughs grouping feels artificial but there is something very authentic about the grim determination to ignore the situation on the part of the Toffs - most likely that of knowing they were being photographed to be the butt of a visual joke. It is this mixture of the authentic and the fake that makes this photograph so memorable. The characters and their costumes are real, the idea occurs to the photographer and he tweaks reality to make the idea work. Yet the reluctance of the Toffs to play along, their studied sang-froid, would be very hard to fake.
Another very famous photograph that crossed the boundary between Reportage and Lifestyle Photography is Robert Doisneau’s 1950, ‘The Kiss by the Hotel de Ville’. Doisneau’s agent pitched to various American publications the idea of a series of photos on, ‘The Lovers of Paris.’ leveraging Paris’s long-standing reputation for romance. The set were commissioned by Life Magazine and Doisneau rather than face the monumental time-sponge of waiting for passing couples to spontaneously kiss staged them with the help of a couple whom he knew. They posed in various locations around the city with Doisneau readied to document the affection. Of course passers-by were not prepped and were duly recorded ignoring the gesture of intimacy and in so doing unwittingly made the image feel authentic and unscripted. It is this melding of the contrived and the real that once again makes this early lifestyle photographs convincing and indicated the path that other lifestyle photographers would follow.
This search for the real in the contrived was nothing new but as the advertising industry expanded in the 20th century it took a central place. The trick was to sell without the consumer becoming overly conscious they were being sold to. Lifestyle Photography became increasingly employed by advertisers as an alternative to Product Photography. This worked particularly well where products were difficult to differentiate.
The pilot episode of the TV show ‘Madmen’ (Lionsgate 2007-2015) called ‘Smoke gets in your eyes’ depicts a fictional ad agency meeting in 1960 with executives from real-life tobacco company Lucky Strike . Facing growing concerns from consumers about the health implications of smoking the meeting turns sticky as the agency fails to answer this challenge until Creative Director Don Draper realises the solution is to ignore the issue and focus on the lifestyle benefits of living in ignorance. His hasty new tagline - ‘It’s toasted!’ - was in fact Lucky Strike’s real tagline from their campaign in 1917. Indeed the writer Matthew Wiener’s idea appears to owe much to a novel written by Robert R. Updegraff in 1916 in which an eponymous advertising creative, ‘Obvious Adams,’ figures out the way to sell stationary is to emphasise the wholesome characteristics of well-made paper rather than by trying to distinguish his client’s particular brand. The thought that all paper was made the same way would not trouble consumers enticed by images of the way this particular paper was made.
The central insight is that the wholesome image of an appealing lifestyle can sell a brand irrespective of the product. Lifestyle photography thus evokes the feel of the brand, it’s soul or spirit, not the specific characteristics of the brand.
One of the longest running and most successful exemplars of this principle advertised something that was not at all wholesome but the campaign made it appear as if it was. Originally the Marlboro brand was created as a filtered cigarette to appeal to the female market. At the time filtered cigarettes were assumed to be safer and so the tagline went - “ivory tips protect the lips” . When executives at Philip Morris decided they wanted to entice men to smoke Marlboro they asked advertiser Leo Burnett who introduced the rugged cowboy motif and an icon: ‘The Marlboro Man’ was born. This spawned a huge array of lifestyle photography campaigns that featured rugged cowboys doing rugged things in a rugged (and quintessentially mid-western American) landscape whilst smoking (ruggedly). Of course it was impossible to see what precise brand they were smoking, but this was the genius of lifestyle photography: the product could be inferred. Indeed when tobacco advertising became so restricted that the cowboys could not be depicted at all the “Marlboro Country” advertising campaign could carry on showcasing the familiar rugged landscape of the American mid-west but now entirely empty of people and smokers could infer the rest.
Lifestyle Advertising Photography
The great advertising campaigns of the 1980’s and 1990’s, in many ways the Golden Age of Print Advertising, were dominated by lifestyle photography advertising campaigns. The Sony Walkman which launched in 1979 evangelised the liberation of the audio listener from the location of the audio device. Naturally its theme was illustrated by lifestyle photographs of consumers out and about. The tagline “For Anybody, Anywhere, Anytime” was illustrated by someone painting a building, someone by the pool, someone on a plane, even a couple sharing a romantic dinner all glued to their Walkmans.
Other quintessential 1980s brand campaigns featured lifestyle photo campaigns. Nike hired Seattle-based advertising executive John Brown in 1977 to produce one new advert each month in “Runner’s World” to coincide with the launch of a new product. These were done with tight product photographs that emphasised the technology of the shoes. In 1978 they found themselves without a new product and so had to think of something else. So they created a different kind of advert focused on the consumer. Photographer Bob Peterson photographed his friend Howard Miller out running on a remote road in Redmond, Washington on a zoom lens from a considerable distance. The result was a tiny figure dwarfed by the landscape. The Nike products couldn’t be seen at all but the tagline - “There is no finish line” - made the message seem both worthy and low-key. Aspirations were similarly low-key when the ad was run but the response was to transform Nike’s advertising strategy. Individual runners immediately wrote in asking for a copy of the print and Nike launched not only an ad print sales department but it’s iconic didactic style of advertising. “Just do it!” followed with fresh rounds of action lifestyle photos and Nike’s sales mushroomed.
Luxury Lifestyle Photography for Hotels & Resorts
The sector I often work with - that of hospitality lifestyle photography - tends to focus on the relaxed rather than the sweaty but this shift from just portraying products to portraying consumers and the lifestyle it affords them has followed the same pattern as Nike.
The first photographs advertising hotels showed just the building’s exterior. ‘Raffles Hotel’ in Singapore started advertising in European and American magazines in the 1930s with black and white photographs of the exterior and quotes from Rudyard Kipling: “Feed at Raffles when visiting Singapore”. It also advertised it’s mod-cons: “Baths and hot and cold running water…Telephones and Electric Fans in Every Room”. But the development of the ‘hotel brand’ pioneered by Conrad Hilton required a form of advertising that did not specify an individual property but emphasised the universal service values of them all. So Hilton was one of the first to show lifestyle brand photographs of everyday hotel functions like asking for directions or relaxing in the lobby that emphasised the universal standards of service that Hilton was offering.
Today luxury hotel lifestyle photography tends to depict family gatherings, social events, and weekend getaway precisely because these are ubiquitous activities. Similarly commercial lifestyle photographs show meetings, break-out space conversations and gadget use as it’s what people tend to do.
My challenge, that of the luxury lifestyle photographer, is to transform these ubiquitous activities into beautiful images that emphasise the superior service offering afforded by luxury sector clients. I do this by organising the complex logistics required with the help of a dedicated production team.
Together we take are of all the key aspects of a Lifestyle Photo-shoot including model casting and contract negotiation, the production of style guidelines, the running of the wardrobe and commissioning stylists and MUA. The result is a complex production all in the pursuit of the perfect lifestyle photograph: seemingly stolen and off-the-cuff yet anything but.