Audience and Institutions

Featuring Lana Del Rey, Ed Sheeran and Kurt Cobain

Lana Del Rey

This portrayal of Lana is particularly unique as it can be considered as possibly R rated. The blood and crown can give her a royalty ‘vibe’ however the youthful expression can connote immaturity which the magazine might of possibly wanted to portray.

This issue of Billboard shows Lana in a completely different look. She has different hair and a completely different outfit to the cover before. This portrays her in a varied image which seems softer and more angelic to the harsher more immature Q image.

Lana is portrayed in a more sexualized way on this issue of Rolling Stone. The simplistic outfit and pose seems more mature out of the two other pictures. This shows that she has evolved and become more mature as images progress.

Ed Sheeran

Ed Sheeran looks similar in all of these images. He has a look of innocence which is hard to portray in other ways. Therefore the contrast of clothing and tattoos look more tougher and rouged.

Total Guitar and Q magazine both have the image of Ed Sheeran with a guitar. This proves his identity as a musician and can seem more realistic as him then the photos in Billboard and Brink.

Kurt Cobain

All these issues of Kurt Cobain would be a lot more older since he died quite young. Therefore they all portray him at a similar stage in his life compared to Lana Del Rey who had a variety of images which illustrated her in different ways.

SPIN and Q particularly stand out since they both have a very sincere black and white edit which can connote an essence of softness or harshness depending on the tone of the edit. These both compare to NME and People where they are both more saturated with a hue tone on People and a striking blue saturation on NME.