An Early ‘Denial of Ekphrasis’: Controversy over the Breakout of the Visual in the Jazz Age Tabloids and the New York Times

Abstract

This case study focuses on the use of visual elements - and the criticism over such use - in 1920s newspapers in New York, applying Jay David Bolter’s concept of ‘denial of ekphrasis’. The pioneering Jazz Age papers, acting as early ‘multimedia screens’, used photographic elements to communicate information in novel ways, contributing to the undermining of the analytical power of the written word. Elite criticism of these papers evinces nothing more than a class-based contempt for popular cultural forms, while examination of the contemporary New York Times shows that, by the mid-1920s, that paper was already paralleling many of the visual and content-based choices selected by its jazz journalism counterparts. Even so, this study finds that, in line with Bolter’s theories, the underlying traditions of the press were not fundamentally altered by technological developments and the spread of the visual form.