FREAK-TV: What Your Band’s 8″-By-10″ Glossy Says About You

My first job in journalism was as an editorial assistant at New York magazine, writing up the back-of-the-book culture listings. This meant that I received a lot of promotional mailings from movie studios, PR firms, etc. I was consistently surprised by the 8-by-10 promo pictures sent out for young female classical musicians: they were invariably all sexed-up, as if they were promoting a model or actress rather than a violinist. (Check out, for instance, this photo gallery of the violinist Lara St. John.)

The 8-by-10’s for pop and rock bands, meanwhile, were — well, they were pretty darn inscrutable. And that seemed to be the point. This fact is nicely illustrated in Nick Graham‘s latest installment of FREAK-TV.