This image is a coloured photograph, in which is portrayed a woman. She is sitting down, semi-naked, covered only by a white shirt and a bowler hat. She wears a chained necklace. She looks straight at the camera. With one hand she holds the hat, while she keeps the other hand close to her body, on the floor. A small part of her breast is revealed from under the hat. On a black background two strong lights. In front of her there is a bottle of perfume, off centred. The light is much stronger on her face than on her body. There is as well some text: the name of the brand, the name of the perfume and the name of a website.
The photograph is an advertisement for CocoMadmoiselle, a Chanel perfume, taken by the photographer Dominique Issermann in
2007. The model is the actress Keira Knightley. The purpose of this photograph
is to sell, function emphasized by the presence of the written message, the name
of the website: chanel.com. More than this, the presence of the imperative form
of the verb ‘’to shop’, ‘Shop Chanel.com’, informs the viewer that the image
she/ he sees has the function of selling. So, the consumer will be persuaded to
buy, not only by the visual message, but by the linguistic text as well.
Perfume ads ‘can give no real information about the product so that the
function…rests totally on making a connection with an image drawn from outside
the ad world’ (Wiliamson in Marris). Here the denoted image implies
no code (‘this is the case of the advertising photograph’).
Even if in this specific photograph there are symbols
carried along with the meaning of the image, they lose some of their
significations when being included in the context of advertising. Still, some interpretation analysis can be
done. The white shirt represents the presence through absence of the man. The bowler hat develops
interpretations which arise from the existence of the film The UnbearableLightness of Being, based on a novel written by Milan Kundera, where one of the
characters is a naked woman with a bowler hat. ‘Objects of play and eroticism,
hats can evoke everything from the menacing to the seductive’ (Ronnberg). The lights in the background frame the stage she performs on, as an
actress in the real life and as a star in the photographic message. Being a
celebrity, she is represented in this ad as a woman who plays a role. Although
her pose is static, there is a feeling of visual activity.
Playful, the woman
looks at the man present beyond the camera. This advertising doesn’t
necessarily create new meanings, but translates the ‘image’ of Keira Knightley
into something meaningful.
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