Representation of postmodern realty in woman magazines: Analysis advertisement photographs

Photograph as a technological, cultural and ideological tool is placed in the center of the debates about the reality since its discovery and in consumption society it has became a dominant power which converts the consumer's point of view to the reality and object, also it influences the consumption choices and life styles. When postmodern situation as one of the equivocal and controversial notions is considered with its relationship with the reality concept, it especially demonstrate its aspects with its intertextuality, pastiche, collage, eclectic esthetic and irony characteristics via communication tools and advertising photography. In the studied photographs, how advertising photographs' which contain specialties about postmodern reality carry and convey these specialties is found out. In this thesis, the women who are the effectual subjects of the consumption society and the photographs which are in the magazines that they consume are investigated and the main purpose is to find out the importance of the photograph's in this process, the interventions that the reality is exposed to in the postmodern visual culture and to show how the physical reality is broken as a result of these enforcements. The studied photographs are selected with purposive sample method from Turkey's best selling women magazines and magazines' web pages and they are investigated based on postmodern specialties. As a result of the investigation of postmodern advertising photographs which are formed according to the capitalist system and the benefits of the consumption culture it is seen that the reality concept has found a response in both visual level and consumer level. This situation is manifested with semiotic schematic analysis and postmodern reading techniques.