“How Do You ‘Do’ Bokeh?” The Aesthetics of How-to Videos about Background Blur and Eroticized Women

Producers of online instructional videos about bokeh emphasize disks of light and out-of-focus backgrounds. They demonstrate how camera lenses and technical features can render bokeh, or unfocused areas. Photographic and video bokeh ordinarily appears away from the center of attention. The bokeh genre, in opposition to typical photography and video practices, foregrounds the peripheral and proposes aesthetics and ways of looking by seeing and not seeing objects. However, producers of online instructional videos about bokeh sometimes couple their sensual aestheticization of backgrounds to their stated attempts to satisfy viewers’ investments in filling foregrounds with images of objectified women. These producers emphasize unconventional aesthetics as a means of establishing their creative and technical expertise and obscuring their reproduction of traditional conceptions of women as viewable and controllable. Close textual analysis, literature on photography and transparency, and feminist considerations of representation allow me to consider the aesthetics and functions of this how-to form.

Background studies prepared by state committees for the White House Conference on Aging. A report by the Subcommittee on Problems of the Aged and Aging to the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate.

Mode of access: Internet.

Principles of claim adjusting; a manual explaining the procedure , with background material, for settling claims under life, health and accident insurance policies.

Mode of access: Internet.

Bookbinding, its background and technique /

Includes indexes.

A wonderful story of old time Evangelism, being a simple account of the life and time of Jacob Albright, founder of the Evangelical Association, with the historical background and antecedents.

Bibliographical references.

Reflections on American relations with Japan. Prepared as a background paper for the Conference on Japanese-American relations to be held at Honolulu, Jan. 17-20, 1953, under the auspices of the Institute of Pacific Relations of Hawaii and the Japan Institute of Pacific Relations.

Mode of access: Internet.

Military compensation background papers : compensation elements and related manpower cost items, their purpose and legislative backgrounds.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Background paper on social services for the aging; prepared under the direction of Planning Committee Social Services.

Mode of access: Internet.

Outline of historical background of selective service, from biblical days to January 1, 1952,

Mode of access: Internet.

A historical background of printing,

cover-title.

Early Hebrew story; its historical background,

Mode of access: Internet.

Hazardous air pollutant emissions from magnetic tape manufacturing operations : background information for promulgated standards /

Mode of access: Internet.

Background checks for firearm transfers, 1999 /

Shipping list no.: 2000-0333-P.

Background paper on population trends, social and economic implications /

Cover title.

Background paper on state organization; prepared under direction of Planning Committee, State Organization.

Mode of access: Internet.