Kitsch
Photographic kitsch favors exaggerated effects and is often used in an ironic mode that foregrounds artifice and instant readability.
Kitsch refers to art and design associated with gaudy surface effects, ready-made formulas, and emphatic sentiment, often dismissed as poor taste but sometimes adopted knowingly for irony or amusement. The word enters critical discourse as a German loanword associated with cheap, low-quality pictures sold in late-19th-century Munich, later becoming an international term for mass-oriented aesthetics tied to industrial production and commodity culture. In broader cultural use, the style is also reclaimed as pleasingly distasteful or enjoyed as "so bad it’s good," and it can be mobilized to turn familiar symbols and sentiments into parody or critique.
In photography, kitsch is often recognized through hyper-saturated palettes, melodramatic lighting, and compositions that amplify cuteness, nostalgia, patriotism, or piety into a single, unambiguous emotion. Subjects frequently come from mass-produced iconography and souvenir culture that blend religious imagery with tacky modern materials such as neon, plastic, or toy props. Photographers may emphasize the effect through staged, directorial setups with vintage furniture and artificial flowers, or through low-tech bricolage using found objects and cheap replicas. Techniques that heighten spectacle—filters, exaggerated color grading, punchy contrast, and overt retouching—support a sense of packaged feeling and instant legibility.
The term overlaps with camp, which has strong historical ties to queer culture, whereas kitsch is more broadly linked to mass culture and object-based sentiment. Kitsch also relates to cliché as a method of producing prettiness from exhausted meanings, and it is sometimes compared to kawaii as a cuteness-centered alternative to refined taste.