Cosphotography is a photography genre and a form of capturing the Cosplay culture, where people dress up and performed as characters of all types of popular media texts.The cosphotography acts as reflect and define agent in the performance of cosplay phenomenon. There are three main genres of cosphotography, which are Runway, Hallway and Studio portrait.
According to Mountfort et al. (2018), the history of Cosphotography started around 1908 in the US through news articles in newspaper. A craze documented a couple, William Fell of Cincinnati and his wife, dress up or cosplay as science fiction strip cartoons characters, Mr. Skygack from ‘Mr. Skygack from Mars’ and Miss Dillpickles from ‘Chicago Daybook’. Two years after this event, news article reported that a young women created a Skygack costume and wear it to a ball and won first prize. Her male friend later borrowed the costume for a skating rink advertisement. He was arrested by Tacoma police and released on bail for walking around the city masquerading, as it was prohibited. We later able to see the wider culture of costume dress up or cosplaying and photography in around late 1930s and early 1940s, with the Worldcon in New York and the New York World’s fair. The New York World’s fair has a futuristic theme ‘The world of Tomorrow’ they had domes, transportation and models, while Worldcon has around 200 participants dressed up and posed for photographs. As culture and technology developed so did the Cosphotography production, circulation and audience reception. From black and white in the 1940s, Polaroids and instamatics in the 1950s to 1970s, then SLRs and digicams in the 1980s to 1990s, and now more choice of technology for photography such as DSLR camera, Smartphone camera and many types of high quality video capture devices.
Cosphotography have three main genres of cosphotography, which are Runway, Hallway and Studio portrait.
Runway is a genre or style that capture while the cosplayer is on fashion show stage. Similar to the mainstream fashion show culture, this is like a catwalk stage where cosplayer show off their costumes. This style “have a definite presence, especially on promotional websites or pages curated by fans who have been favored on the competition stage.” (Mountfort et al., 2018).
Hallway is the more casual, informal genre or style of cosphotography, it can be taken from any photographic devices, such as DSLR, smartphones or camcorders, etc. This style is distributed through online social media platforms, to spark people’s interest in cosplaying culture.
Studio portrait genre or styleis “the dominant visual genres that evolved out of convention spaces” (Mountfort et al., 2018). It is when a cosplayer becomes a model for the photographers, it can be both indoor or out, as well as with physical props or just blue or green screen. They are also allowed to used the photographs of themselves for self promotion of their costume as well.
Cosplayer also view being photographs as something that to be expected, as well as a compliment to the cosplayer.
Reference:
Mountfort, P., Peirson-Smith, A., & Geczy, A. (2018). Planet cosplay: Costume play, identity and global fandom. Intellect.
Pop Genres 2020 