Ready for Your Close-Up? PolyvalentIdentity and the Hollywood Headshot

SCOTT FRANK

Headshots are commercial portraits that are arguably the currency of the actor’s trade in the Hollywood entertainmentindustry. But as with all cultural artifacts, a single object can be subject to multiple interpretations by theconstituencies that make use of it. This article utilizes a polyvalent interpretation to examine the ways in whichactors, photographers, and casting agents all subscribe to the same denotation of these objects, while retaining asignificant difference in their valuation. [acting, film, Hollywood, photography, polysemy]

Introduction

T he conventions are familiar—flowing blondetresses frame a face unmarred by age lines; asquare jaw sets off an insouciant stubble

beneath steely blue eyes that gaze out at the viewer—these are “headshots,” photographic documents thatare, arguably, the currency of acting in Los Angeles.But headshots are not just documents, recordings of aspecific face; they are documentary, transcribing anentire network of social relations, revealing aspects ofthe complex set of relationships that underlie the Hol-lywood entertainment industry. The discourse of docu-mentary photography, John Tagg notes, is “the historyof a specific practice of representation that has to belocated in the cultural strategy of particular modes ofgovernance: a hybrid of discipline and spectacle, ofdocumentation and publicity, a strategy of manage-ment of meaning and identity” (2009:xxxii). Toanalyze headshots is to understand what it means toread the spectacle they show us, and the identities theyrepresent—not just the actor portrayed, but also thephotographer who created the artifact and the castingagent who reads it. It is to interrogate how headshotsexpress specific commercial, aesthetic, and socialrequirements that are a result of the highly constrainedcircumstances of their creation and use. And it is tograpple with a society’s standards of appearance, desir-ability, and attraction.

Establishing Shot

Overheard at a Hollywood party, a headshot photogra-pher is talking about his business, how each actor whocomes to him wants his or her portraits to be unique.Cut to another party, a few weeks later. A producer,casting a small film, laments the stacks of actor portraitshe has to go through, especially the ones that are uniqueor stand out from the rest. “I want them all to lookalike!” he says, “so I can pick the ones I want out.” Theapparent disconnect signaled here is the focus of thisarticle: actors think that casting agents want one thing,but the casting people are actually looking for another.The photographers, as the originators, stand in themiddle. Headshots are material artifacts that are createdas a representation of a single set of social relations and(sub)cultural norms, but which have multiple distinctconstituencies: commercial photographers, actors, andcasting agents. Each of these populations takes the sameobject and creates different meanings from it, forming acodependent polyvalent triad.

Cultural studies abound with research on thepolysemic nature of artistic works (e.g., Dibben 1999;Duffy 2010; Fiske 1986; Rockler 2001)—the idea thata single text can be interpreted differently by differentaudiences, who constitute their own readings. Here,we focus instead on the idea that headshots arepolyvalent—that is, audiences “may share understand-ings of the denotations of the text, but disagree about

bs_bs_banner

Visual Anthropology Review, Vol. 28, Issue 2, pp. 179–188, ISSN 1058-7187, online ISSN 1548-7458. © 2012 by the American Anthropological Association. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-7458.2012.01123.x.

the valuation” (Condit 1989:430). At a basic level, whena producer says she wants one thing from a headshot,and an actor thinks she is looking for something else,this signals a varying valuation of the artifact in apolyvalent relationship.

Conventional polysemic theory posits that differentaudiences will read or interpret a given experience indifferent ways. A polyvalent interpretation suggests thatsubjects share the denotation of the text (in this case,headshots) but interpret it through different valuesderived from their relationship to it both as an artifactand through their place in the overall social system ofmedia creation (Condit 1989). So, an actor and a castingdirector look at the photo in Figure 1: both see the sameface staring out (the denotation), but the actor thinks“this is unique” and “this will get me jobs,” while thecasting director thinks “damn, it’s unique” and “now Ihave to view 8,000 more of these”1 (Figure 1: headshot).

This research involved discussions with actors, pho-tographers, and casting professionals, as well as obser-vation of headshot photography sessions and a “castingcall” done via one of the widely used Los Angeles

casting websites. The latter was done specifically forthis project, and within just a few days netted almost500 actor responses, which probably is its own lessonabout the economies of Hollywood.

By interrogating the relationship each populationhas to the headshots, we can understand the way dif-fering constituencies of the shared social-economicsystem can hold polyvalent or differing views of thesame artifact that nevertheless coalesce to somehowenable the system to work (in this case, the castingsystem). In discussions with informants, one does notget the impression that anyone likes headshots, and aswe will see, each group looks at them differently, butsomehow, they all come together to work as an indis-pensable portion of the media production system.

The Artifact

Materially speaking, headshots are portraits in a classicsense, created with a specific set of parameters. First ofall, they are all photographs. Second, they are almostpredominantly (unsurprisingly) of the head.2 We will getto the third parameter in a moment, after addressing thespecifics of the artifacts themselves. Headshots haveboth a physical and a digital component. In physicalform, a headshot is usually an 8 ¥ 10 glossy, with theactor’s photograph in the center, his or her name writtenalong the bottom, and a resumé stapled along the back.3Today, they are always in color, although until the early21st century and the advent of popular digital photog-raphy, for decades the standard headshot was in blackand white. The recent transition to digital photographyhas affected an array of aspects of photographs and thecasting process, but the format remains basically thesame for a digital headshot as for a printed one.

The third parameter is perhaps the most important:they are made for commercial purposes. That is to say,headshots are commerce, not art; none hang in theNational Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, althoughmany hang totemically in an array of Los Angelesestablishments, from bars to barbeque joints, to laun-dromats (Figure 2: locations). These are not familyphotos; they are not taken at the “glamour shots” storein a local mall to give out to friends. Many portraits arecommercial in their origin (the photographer was paidto take them); far fewer are created specifically asengines of commercial enterprise.

Scott Frank is an anthropologist and museum interpretation specialist. He has worked in institutional museums for ten years, andhis ethnographic work on Hollywood has appeared in Science as Culture and the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television.

FIGURE 1. A standard actors’ headshot, illustrative of genre con-ventions. Note the framing, lighting, and expression of the

subject. Photo © Natalie Young.

180 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 28 Number 2 Fall 2012

Headshots are also numerous: every working actorhas one. In fact, most use several at any given time andhave had multiple sets throughout their careers.4 It ishard to get a fix on the number of actors in Los Angeles,but worldwide, the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG) and theAmerican Federation of Television and Radio Artists(AFTRA) actor guilds have roughly 120,000 and 70,000members, respectively (AFTRA 2009; SAG 2011). Thetwo guilds overlap,5 and it is impossible to know exactlyhow many headshots any given actor has or has had,but even the vaguest of estimates means there areseveral hundred thousand of these artifacts in existence.

Actors

The primary constituency associated with headshots isthe one that they depict: actors. Perhaps the first thingto understand about actors and headshots is that everysingle actor has them. In fact, most actors have multipleshots at any given time, and have new shots taken asthey age or progress through their careers. Getting aheadshot is the first “professional” thing most actors dowhen they begin their careers; having a series of head-shots is the minimum requirement for a working actor,and so the first step in the professionalization of theircraft. The choice of a photographer is an important one:a headshot session routinely costs between $400 and$600 (some are cheaper, some are much more), a sig-nificant expense for an entry-level working actor, and

that does not even include the cost of reproducinghundreds of 8 ¥ 10 photos or wallet cards.

As a measure of identity, headshots are meant toreflect the mutable nature of the actor’s talent, andevery actor has multiple “looks.” Each look is used for adifferent type of audition—commercials, types of role,or types of production (dramas, comedies, etc.)6—andemphasizes a different aspect of an actor’s identity,appearance, and appeal (Figure 3: different looks).

Few actors romanticize their headshots or theirlooks. To an outside observer, these photographs mayappear to be very glamorous, but to an actor they aremerely tools, a necessary component of their job. Whilea lot of weight is attached to them, the headshots appearto be at most a part of an actor’s public persona, ratherthan a personal photographic memory. That is, they arepart of a performance identity, not a private one. Forexample, many actors may have their headshots as theirprofile photograph on Facebook or other social net-working (even dating) sites, but it is extremely unusualto find one who has them up in their home, as theywould have other photos of themselves with friends orfamily.7 They are not, in that sense, personal photo-graphs. They are commercial ones.

When actors talk about their headshots, they tendto focus on two things: (1) choosing the proper headshotto attract attention (one informant said, “An actor has tolearn what makes a casting agent click on their head-shot while they’re scrolling down a page with hundredsof faces”), and (2) trying to think about their facility oruse by casting professionals (“A headshot will get you inthe door, but once you’re there, it is your talent andpersonality that get you the role—or don’t”).

One actor suggested that “you have to change yourheadshot from time to time, or you get pigeonholed in aspecific type of role—and worse, get overly familiar”;another said his impression was that “if the picturefalls in the agent’s believability scale—what they thinka Mafioso, or a sweet girlfriend, etc., looks like—you canget cast.” Both are true in their own way (the latter morethan the former), but these are aspects of headshots’ usein casting that may reveal more about the personaluncertainties of the acting craft than day-to-day castingrelations. As with other forms of localized knowledge,the actors’ impressions about the utility of their head-shots do often seem to be accurate—but still do not quiteencompass the ways in which casting directors ulti-mately react to the artifacts, as we will see in a bit.

When an actor gets a professional set of headshotstaken, the photographer will usually shoot severalhundred photos. Actors are aware of their choice to picka specific photograph out of those hundreds. Whenasked how they selected the photos they use, most said

FIGURE 2. The totemic use of headshots at Pasquale Shoe Repair,Los Angeles. Some Los Angeles establishments claim to be the [drycleaner, car stereo store, shoe repair] of the stars; many imply thatcelebrity patronage through headshot displays such as this one.

Photo by Scott Frank.

Ready for Your Close-Up? FRANK 181

they relied on others to a large degree: some had theiragents pick, others polled non-actor friends in theentertainment industry, and some asked the photogra-phers themselves. In fact, one of the surprising findingsof this project is that almost nobody thinks that actorsare capable of selecting their own shots. Not the agents,not the photographers, not even the actors themselves.

Actors, certainly the ones starting out, feel theyhave more to gain by relying on the advice of others

with more experience in the field. But the more expe-rienced (or arguably more self-aware) actors recognizethat when selecting a photograph of themselves, thetendency is toward vanity: people want to pick a photoin which they look good, one they think shows thefewest flaws, catches their best side, where their hairlooks great, et cetera. But contrary to popular belief,what a casting agent is looking for is not necessarilyhow good an actor looks, but whether the headshot

FIGURE 3. Different “looks” in headshot photography are an important part of an actor’s repertoire. Each look exists to pitch the actorfor a different type of role. Note how the actor can be portrayed in different ways, while still scrupulously holding to the commercially

recognized headshot conventions. Photos by David Mueller.

182 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 28 Number 2 Fall 2012

sums up their personality or their ability to play therole.

For an actor, the headshots express the core of theirprofessional identity, not just what they look like, ortheir personality (both of which do show through in theideal headshot), but also the type of roles they will beplaying: leading man, ingénue, best friend, comic relief.Knowing what kind of roles an actor is suited for is animportant aspect of successful submission for roles, andindeed, as one actor noted when discussing roles andher headshots, “the hardest thing for actors to gettingahead in the industry is succumbing to the fact that theindustry is based not on how you see yourself, but onhow others see you.” So in a sense, self-identity, orawareness of self-identity, is at the heart of castingsuccess.

Interestingly, while almost all of the actors I spokewith recognized that, to some degree, it is better to haveothers pick—or strongly assist—you with your shots,there are bad headshots out there. One actor showed meher shots and said she had picked them specificallyagainst conventional wisdom because she wanted themto stand out. Once she was gone, her colleagues, stand-ing nearby, shook their heads in disbelief at the choicesshe had made.8

So actors are cognizant of the role of headshotartifacts in their lives, and the ways in which their ownvanities are showcased. To an actor, the valuation of aheadshot, its most important functions, is to make sureit gets them noticed in a huge pool of candidates andthat it adequately represents who they really are—orrather, who they want others to think they are.

Photographers

No artifact exists in a vacuum; implicit to understand-ing photographs is understanding the people whocreated them. Photography is an extraordinarilycommon technology in the United States, and arguably,any photographer could take a headshot; at one point,almost every Sears in America had a portrait studio. Butin Los Angeles, there has evolved a subset of specialistphotographers who create primarily headshots for aliving.9 In fact, given the number of headshots neededby the insatiable entertainment industry machine, itshould come as no surprise that within the mechanismsof the entertainment industry, there is a fairly robust,and occasionally cutthroat, community of headshotphotographers.

The creation of headshots follows its own ritualizedpractice, performed by every actor hoping to land a parton-screen. For example, let us say you are an actor and

you need a headshot. Maybe you are new to LosAngeles, maybe your old shots are a few years old—what have you. If you are lucky, a good friend has somegreat headshots and tells you the name of their photog-rapher. Otherwise, your agent or manager (if you haveone) probably has a recommendation, or you can goonline to find one.10

Following initial contact, most photographers havea pre-shoot meeting with their actor/clients, either inperson or by telephone. They chat, tell the client what tobring in terms of clothing and makeup, and listen to theclient’s concerns, needs, and desires, including whattype of shots the client wants, specific ideas for theidentities they want displayed, and how they want tocome across. This is where the first locus of polyvalenceemerges, as the actor’s needs, desires, and expectationscome into contact with the photographers’ notions. Asin any artist–client relationship, there is a give-and-takebetween the photographers’ experience in the field andthe actors’ idea of what they want for themselves.11 Hereis where the actors’ frequent requests to have one that isdifferent from the rest come to the surface.12 Whilesitting in one of these client meetings, I heard an actortell the photographer informant that she had picked himafter a referral because she had seen his website and theshots he took looked different from those of other pho-tographers, not like the same standard ones. The irony,of course, is that aside from minor individual stylisticdifferences, all headshots to a large degree look alike.Howard Becker notes that when it comes to artisticconventions, “you can always do things differently ifyou are prepared to pay the price in increased effort ordecreased circulation of your work” (1982:33), but fewin the industry seem willing to risk it and to pay thatprice, so accepted standards for headshots reign, andthey are ignored at an actor’s peril. Because there arestandard forms, the minor differences arguably make allthe difference. But arguably, because the shots are ulti-mately seen as online thumbnails, the differences maynot even be apparent to the casting agent who viewsthem.

After a pre-meet, the photo shoot is arranged, hairand makeup contracted for (most professional photog-raphers work with their own hair/makeup people, whomthe actor must pay along with the photographer’s fee).The shoot itself lasts anywhere from one and a half tofive hours, and usually involves multiple places. All thephotographers I spoke with primarily use “locations”:real, out-in-the-world sites rather than studios. Theymove about the city and take the shots at a series offamiliar places they feel reflect the character of each“look.” To photographers, location shots and naturallighting make the photos seem more “real,” a perhaps

Ready for Your Close-Up? FRANK 183

ironic counterpoint given the highly constructed natureof the images being produced. After shoots, photogra-phers then spend hours in the lightroom (a digitalversion of a darkroom), tweaking the images by remov-ing obvious wrinkles, altering colors slightly, et cetera.

In fact, one thing noted by several photographerswas that the switch from film to digital productionsurprisingly meant more work for them, not less—because of the newfound need to spend hours at the endof each shooting day in the lab. Many cited 12- or14-hour workdays as common. In fact, as far as pho-tographers are concerned, the primary recent shift in thecreation of these cultural artifacts is the shift from filmto digital. Photographers referred to a number of rami-fications of the transition, which occurred in the early2000s. First, the ability to shoot so many images meantit became easy to do different looks and have them allon display. In the days of film headshots, actors mighthave one or two looks. Now, it is not unusual to havethree, four, or five, each tailored for a slightly differentidentity or casting audience. Second, because there aremore shots, there is a greater chance for the actor’spersonality to come through and more opportunities forit to do so.

Photographers also complain that with the adventof digital photography, the availability of prosumerdigital cameras has had an additional impact on thecreation of headshots. A large number of amateurenthusiasts have entered the competitive market(“Anybody thinks they can take headshots,” said onephotographer), so some actors are less willing to payprofessional rates. This raises additional issues of iden-tity, this time not around what the headshots portray,but rather concerning the artifacts themselves, forinstance, about notions of craft and who creates them.But professional photographers also believe there is asignificant difference between themselves and the ama-teurs because they spend much more time with theclient, and having years of experience doing hundredsof headshots means they know how to take a photo-graph and possess hard-earned insight on how to tweakthem in ways that directors want. As one said to me,“Now that anyone can take a photograph, it’s who’sbehind the camera that makes the difference.”

In fact, that may well be true. Casting directorsindicate that the photographer’s most important abilityis not facility with lighting and composition or thequality of the makeup and wardrobe that the actorwears, but the photographer’s ability to make the actorfeel comfortable, to be themselves, and to be willing tolet their personality come through in the shot, ratherthan just look pretty. Photographers, therefore, setthemselves up as notional interpreters between the

valuations and desire of actors, and those of castingdirectors. This brings us, of course, to the final part ofour polyvalent triad.

Casting Directors

Casting directors are the intended apical users of theseartifacts: theirs are the eyes for which the entire head-shot process exists. Casting directors are also the leastprecisely defined group—technically, a better termwould be “casting professionals” because many peoplecan be involved in casting: there might be several levelsof casting directors, casting associates, et cetera. For avery small production, the producer or director mighteven cast it themselves.

The first thing to understand about these castingprofessionals is that they look at a tremendous numberof photos. One told me that a standard smaller film role,looking for, say, a 22-year-old female, might get them7,000 submissions. Another related his experience onnetwork television where, for a minor guest star role,there would be between 1,500 and 3,000 actors vyingfor the slot. A typical sitcom episode might have one ortwo guest stars, an hour-long drama three to seven. Sofor any given hour of television, a casting professionalmight have had to look at 15,000 headshots. The hungerfor roles should not be underestimated. As part of thisproject, I decided to recruit actors as if for a productionthrough one of the primary casting website services(while being quite candid that it was “just” anthropol-ogy research). I received a total of 493 submissions ofactors asking to participate (“be cast”)—roughly 450 ofthose were in the first two days. While hardly numbersin the thousands, to an anthropologist, that seemed tobe a lot of informants turning out for something clearlystated as having nothing to do with their careers. So theprimary problem that casting professionals face whendealing with headshots is how to derive useful meaningfrom such a vast sea of content; that is, how to find theright person for the role in a gigantic haystack ofphotographs.

The method through which most casting in LosAngeles works involves a complex series of events, butnearly all casting professionals at one point use one ofthe online casting services, and eventually the physicalheadshot artifacts themselves. For example, say anhour-long cop show has a typical episode coming up.13

Casting professionals begin by sending a script to thecompany Breakdown Services Ltd. (the industry-utilizedstandard). Breakdown will then pull all speaking partsnot filled by regular cast members, write a description(victim, distraught wife, wiseacre beat cop), and send it

184 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 28 Number 2 Fall 2012

back to the casting agency for approval. Once approved,the descriptions are posted online and the castingagents wait for the applicants to pour in, in the form ofthousands of photos, all on their desks.

The next stop is headshot-intensive. After viewingavailable roles on one of the several widely used castingwebsites,14 interested actors all submit their informa-tion. Casting professionals see a view that looks likeFigure 4 (Figure 4: page from L.A. Casting) and willscroll through hundreds—and often thousands—ofheadshots for each role. Each shot is either passed overentirely, or rated a 1, a 2, or a 3, depending on howexcited the casting professional is about each prospect.Here, in a sense, is the moment of truth, the moment forwhich the actors and photographers have been working,and where we see the way their valuation of headshots

differs from that of casting professionals—the selectionmethod casting professionals use from all of those thou-sands of photos. What makes a casting professionalselect one of the thousands of headshot images? For allthe time and energy actors and photographers expendto make each shot perfect, to make it really sing, theinitial answer from casting people I spoke to was “I pickbased on impulse and instinct.” It turns out there are nohard-and-fast rules, no universal guiding principles forwhat they determine to be a good versus a bad head-shot.15 But instinct is the only way to do it—if castingprofessionals have to look at 7,000 photos over thecourse of two days, they cannot spend time reallylooking at each one; a quick glance and an instinctualresponse is the only way to pore through all of the data.And that is what these photos are: data. These data are

FIGURE 4. A casting professional’s view; screen capture from L.A. Casting. Information includes the headshot, rating scale, contactinformation, and height/weight of each actor. In this view, we see 18 actors. For a given role, a casting professional may have to look at

7,000 actors (or 388 pages just like this one).

Ready for Your Close-Up? FRANK 185

supposedly indicative of a commodity the casting direc-tor needs: a good, working actor who will fill the rolebest.

Now, what that visceral impulse means can be dif-ferent: one casting professional told me that “when youcan tell who they are in the headshot,” it means you cantell someone is a good actor. Another said he flashes onhow the headshots fit the mental image he has of thecharacter based on the breakdown description. Thisinterestingly fit with what several actor informantssuspected.

All of the casting professional informants say thatheadshots are not as important as actors think they are.In a sense, this is true as the selection is based on manyfactors, but in a sense, it is also false because the onlything that the casting professional is going by at first isthe headshot. As one actor said, “All a headshot does isget you through the door,” and the casting professionalsagree. After that, it is a resumé and actual acting abilityas demonstrated during a read-through or pre-read thatgets someone the part.

Casting professionals also agree that somehow—and this seems almost mystical—in a truly great head-shot, an actor’s personality, not just their appearance,comes through. In a sense, it is shades of the old sawthat a photograph can capture your soul—or at least anactor hopes it does. One casting agent said that thishappens “in .3% of all headshots.” At first, I assumedthis figure was a joke or an exaggeration, but run thenumbers and it quickly makes sense. If you have a poolof 2,000 applicants, .3 percent equals six people youwould strongly believe are up for the role.

Ironically, then, casting professionals have the mostintuitive relationship to reading a headshot, althoughthey are the farthest removed from its manufacture.Photographers treat headshots as an exercise in theirartistry and technical skill, that is, their ability to createa portrait that fits the conventions the industry requires.Actors obsess over the details of each shot and makecalculated decisions about which photograph best rep-resents them and is suited to apply for a specific role.But casting agents approach the endeavor in what isarguably the least rational (i.e., most intuitive) way ofall, relying on gut feeling, experience gleaned fromyears of working in the field, and personal impressionsof what works best.

Fade to Black

A headshot is two things to all people: identity andcommerce. But it is these things to differing degreesfor each of the three primary constituencies. To an

actor, a headshot is primarily identity, but it is theexpression of an identity utilized for commercial pur-poses. To a photographer, the artifact is almost entirelycommercial (their livelihood), but it deals with aspectsof identity as it tries to help a client bring his or herpersonality to the fore. To a casting director, headshotsare almost entirely commercial, but their commercialutility is based on identity—they must try to discernthe identity they are seeking in thousands upon thou-sands of faces. In an industry popularly, if not actu-ally, conceived of as operating on the basis ofappearance, headshots are totemic images, stand-insduring the early casting process for the people theydepict or represent, photos worth a thousand (resumé)words.

Headshots are both like and unlike other documen-tary photographs. They are similar in their performanceas commodities, and in their location in a specificsystem of social conventions and meanings: in this case,the mainstream American entertainment industry. Buttheir nature also sets them apart. Unlike a standarddocumentary photograph, for example, it is normal—even expected—that headshots will be intentionallymanipulated. Writing on the fidelity of photography,William Mitchell suggests that generally speaking,“photographic forgers and manipulators violate thesanctity rule” of photographic audience expectations(1992:219). But with headshots, the manipulation is notonly accepted but is also assumed by all parties. Aphotographer who did not sweeten the images producedwould be significantly out of step with his peers, and hisclients might not get as much work.

All photographs are loci for the multiple interpre-tations of the people who view them (Edwards 1997;MacDougall 2006; Mitchell 1992). The information pre-sented here helps interrogate the particular polyvalentrelationship between headshots and the multiple con-stituencies they serve. The denotation of the image issimilar, but the valuation by each constituency is not.Among those meanings are the creation of identity onthe part of the actors, the merging of art and commerceon the part of the photographers, and the detached, butstill visceral, viewing of the images by the castingprofessionals. That said, the actual appearance—thedenotation—of these images is an important thing toconsider. As Tagg notes, “When photographed, thesubject surrenders to the systems of representation”(2009:80), and in this case, that representation of whathas emerged historically and culturally as the sharedvalues or ideals of Hollywood: ideas of beauty, desir-ability, and appeal held in common (to some degree) byall three constituencies.16 What we see in a headshot isa representation of the ideals of Hollywood, the distilled

186 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 28 Number 2 Fall 2012

form of the social relations that make up the entertain-ment industry.

This study fits within a larger framework ofresearch on the engine of entertainment culture produc-tion. In the 1950s, Hortense Powdermaker pioneeredethnographic study of Hollywood, positing the value of“a study of the locus of power and its exercise, in thetaboos which circumscribe all production, in the valuesrepresented in goals, in historical and economic factors,and in the introduction of new technology and newideas” (1950:4). Further avenues of research couldfollow the pattern of polyvalent analysis outlined here,focusing on the material culture of other entertainmentindustry artifacts: complex camera systems, elaboratesets, or sumptuous costumes, for example. Hollywood isa vastly undertapped research lode for anthropologistsand offers a broad array of topics ripe for investigation:cultural analysis of production content, interrogation ofthe production process as craft and labor, and analysesof the social relations between actors and agents, pro-ducers and directors, or any of the many other networkrelations contained within the entertainment industry.“Hollywood” is not just composed of actors, producers,and agents, but of many thousands of below-the-linecraftspeople whose work is directly related to the indus-try’s existence, although they might at first glance seemtangential. The three constituencies mentioned in thisarticle are just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, Beckerspecifically uses Hollywood film production as hisexample of the most complex (or at least the mostspecialized) level of collaboration possible in the cre-ation of art (1982:7).

In the final analysis, headshots are a material rep-resentation of the varied networks that are the mostbyzantine part of the Hollywood entertainment indus-try. Material artifacts inscribe social relations: “whenwe look upon a human construction like the cathedralat Chartes, we know ourselves to be in the presence ofhuman intention and values given objective form”(Beckow 1982:120). Headshots are artifacts—albeitvisual ones—of their commercial purpose, execution,and use, and in this they illuminate the social rela-tions of Hollywood. That is to say, the ultimate goal oftheir creation, and the entire process of their produc-tion, is to get actors cast in roles: actors want it,casting agents want it, photographers want it forthem—and each step relies on social networking—having people help you pick the right shot, havingyour manager and agent work casting agents andsites, relationships actors may have built with any ofthese people, or with the producer and director, all inorder to make it happen. In these ways, the photo-graphic artifacts known as headshots become the

material expression of the social relations, values, andaspirations of Hollywood.

Notes

1 This exchange is just for dramatic effect; Figure 1 isactually an example of a good, conventional headshot.

2 The framing of headshots does undergo historical trends:according to informants, in the early 1990s, the three-fourth headshot became common (before reverting backto the classic head-and-shoulders frame), and occasionalfull-body headshots do exist.

3 This also sometimes changes—recently, many actors havegotten business card–sized versions.

4 Most actors go through a number of different sets ofheadshots in their career. One actor told me that theindustry standard is new shots every two years; many getthem when they first move to Los Angeles, or have hadthem retaken in the past few years after the switch todigital.

5 There is an estimated 40,000-member overlap, makingroughly 150,000 unique members. Also note that, as ofJanuary 2012, the two guilds have begun negotiations tomerge into a single union.

6 The industry-wide standard looks do change over time,going through historic cycles. One headshot photographersaid, for example, that a current favorite is the “cougarshot,” whereas in the mid-1990s, the “farmer’s daughter”was a standard.

7 In fact, in 16 years of living in Los Angeles and studyingHollywood, I have never seen a single headshot displayedin an actor’s home.

8 In the interests of confidentiality, I cannot share theseimages here; suffice it to say, they were very quirky, andnot flattering.

9 Depending on the current success of their headshot busi-ness, many photographers take other jobs as they come:regular portrait commissions, commercial shoots, and afew photographers said they had even shot a wedding ortwo. Nonetheless, it is always clear that they considerthemselves primarily headshot photographers, and otherjobs are just occasional sidelines.

10 Per both photographers and actors, the primary way pho-tographers are located and hired is through referral; onephotographer I interviewed said that he gets 90 percent ofhis business through referrals; another, who is booked upsix weeks in advance and claims it is because she spent asizable amount of cash on a slick website, admitted thateven her business was largely referrals; a third does nothave a website at all, and has relied their entire careerpurely on word of mouth—and made a living at it(although that is, apparently, fading).

11 Regarding the mediation between people in any artistic orcraft endeavor, Bourdieu noted that “artistic production isalso—to various degrees depending on the art and on thehistorically variable ways of practising it—the product ofan ‘art’” (1990:34).

Ready for Your Close-Up? FRANK 187

12 One photographer related a story where an actor came tothem, and in the most bland, deadpan voice possible, said,“I want my quirkiness to come out.”

13 A standard full television season involves roughly 22 newepisodes. To reach the critical threshold at which syndi-cation (and thus additional revenue) becomes possible, ashow must have at least 100 episodes, so that magicnumber becomes the goal of many producers.

14 Perhaps the most used are Casting Networks/L.A. Casting (http://home.lacasting.com), Actor’s Access(http://www.actorsaccess.com), and Backstage (http://www.backstage.com).

15 Within reason: assuming all the standard headshot con-ventions have been properly followed. Obviously, badheadshots are easier to pick out than good ones—andcontrary to popular belief (among actors), one thatstands out for its uniqueness is not a good one. Ones thatare extremely good exemplars of the standard conven-tions are.

16 It is a myth that you have to be attractive to make it inHollywood; there are a lot of roles for old, overweight,unconventionally attractive people; think of the sheernumber of actors you see during any given TV show orcommercial break.

References

American Federation of Television and Radio Artists2009 About AFTRA. http://www.aftra.org/aboutaftra.htm,

accessed January 22, 2011.Becker, Howard S.

1982 Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.Beckow, Steven M.

1982 Culture, History, and Artifact. In Material CultureStudies in America. Thomas J. Schlereth, ed. Pp.114–123. Nashville, TN: AASLH Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre1990 The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni-

versity Press.

Condit, Celeste1989 The Rhetorical Limits of Polysemy. Critical Studies

in Mass Communication 6(2):426–447.Dibben, Nicola

1999 Representation of Femininity in Popular Music.Popular Music 18(3):331–356.

Duffy, Brooke Erin2010 Empowerment through Endorsement? Polysemic

Meaning in Dove’s User-Generated Advertising.Communication, Culture & Critique 3(1):26–43.

Edwards, Elizabeth1997 Beyond the Boundary: A Consideration of the

Expressive in Photography and Anthropology. InRethinking Visual Anthropology. Marcus Banks andHoward Murphy, eds. Pp. 53–80. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press.

Fiske, John1986 Television: Polysemy and Popularity. Critical Studies

in Mass Communication 3(4):391–408.MacDougall, David

2006 Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Mitchell, William J.1992 The Reconfigured Eye. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Powdermaker, Hortense1950 Hollywood: The Dream Factory. Boston: Little,

Brown.Rockler, Naomi R.

2001 A Wall on the Lesbian Continuum: Polysemy andFried Green Tomatoes. Women’s Studies in Commu-nication 24(1):90–106.

Screen Actor’s Guild2011 About Us. http://www.sag.org/content/about-us,

accessed January 22, 2011.Tagg, John

2009 The Disciplinary Frame. Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press.

188 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 28 Number 2 Fall 2012