Girl in Action: Junior Bazaar, 1945-1948

The RIT Visual Culture, Arts, and Media Lecture Series presents Rose Bishop, Independent Archivist
A product of postwar consumer culture, Junior Bazaar was one of the first teen-centric fashion magazines to appear on the market in 1945. The magazine celebrated the transformative power of fashion through a multifaceted Modernist lens, often commenting on the constructed nature of feminine identity through self-reflexive photographic strategies. As a compact but robust archive of images, text, and advertisements, Junior Bazaar speaks to role of women in the creation and consumption of Modernism in postwar America. Although the magazine folded after three years, Junior Bazaar had a profound influence on visual culture, launching the careers of Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman, and Robert Frank, among other preeminent American photographers and graphic designers.