ABSTRACT: This study examines the historical trajectory and contemporary persistence of racialized visual logics in the representation of Black women in advertising. Drawing on media studies, visual culture, and advertising scholarship, it traces how visual conventions rooted in slavery-era commodification, post–Civil War domestic caricature, and twentieth-century archetypes continue to shape contemporary campaign imagery. Rather than cataloging stereotypes, the study adapts Siobhan Carter-David’s primary source analysis method to conduct a historically grounded visual analysis of advertisements from the nineteenth century to the present. Within this framework, emphasis on audience positioning, compositional hierarchy, and historical context reveals how racial meaning is systematically organized through sequencing, framing, spatial arrangement, and symbolic contrast within commercial imagery. In doing so, the study demonstrates that contemporary advertising functions as a hybrid representational space in which progress and constraint coexist, as expanded inclusion and stylistic change unfold alongside the persistence of hierarchical visual logics. By shifting attention from representation as presence to representation as construction, the article argues that meaningful transformation depends on how visual and narrative decisions are structured within campaign development and how audience positioning shapes interpretation.
Powell et al. (Sun,) studied this question.