Portraiture

"A true portrait should, today and a hundred years from today, be the Testimony of how this person looked and what kind of human being he was." - Philippe Halsman

Portraiture is a type of photography that arose almost as soon as the invention, and popularisation, of the camera. It is simple in nature, a camera is placed in a specific way to capture a still image of a person and/or people to preserve their existence and who they "were". A simple portrait photograph could be much like the one below, a self portrait of Edward S. Curtis, one of the first portraiture photographers.



Since inception portraiture has kept to its simple roots, but it has mutated beyond recognition as well. Lets look at two portraiture photographers and how their portrait photographs have changed the world of photography as we know it.

Diane Arbus

"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know." - Diane Arbus



Diane Arbus was a photographer who focused on portraiture that includes subjects of people who are considered unusual or weird. Her word has drawn huge opposition and praise, proponents of her work consider her a daring photographer who captured people that would normally be shunned by society and challenged the viewer on their morals and views of society and people. Critics consider her work self indulgent and exploitative.




Diane Arbus's work primarily focuses on portraiture and the art of capturing of ordinary life. More specifically, Diane evokes the capturing of the ordinary lives of the extraordinary people who live them. These people are viewed, subjectively of course, as people who lived in the fringe of society. In informal terms, these types people were considered weird by others who consider themselves as "normal".

Diane Arubus's work is fascinating as it generally captured a lot of surreal imagery of people with strange tastes in fashion bordering on the macabre. Bear in mind her photographic work was taken in the 1970's, an era which, although slightly more embraceful of unusual tastes due to the social changed brought on largely during the 60's, an era that still had strong bigoted views and one which people openly shunned those who were considered unusual.

Diane Arbus liked to photograph homosexuals, disabled people, people with unusual tastes and styles, people who gathered at unusual places, and simply plain and untoward people that were normal. One notable trait of her pictures is that her subjects are often captured as if the camera wasn't there. Rarely do her subjects look into the camera, unless this adds to the artistic quality of the picture. Her subjects often look through the camera or past it, almost as if her photos were a fly on the wall insight into their lives, a mundane event of less than mundane people captured for eternity for our pleasure. This is also known as a Candid portrait

Diane always took her pictures on silver plate emulsion, so her photographs were a rich black and silver colour. In my opinion this made her pictures even more unusual, you look at the subjects with an almost dim view of your own. You would expect these people to have colourful lives and attire, and the fact that you cannot the blast of colour you would be expected to be assaulted by if you met one of these people, your attitude towards them is somewhat more relaxed. You feel as though, without the colour that would be associated with unusual people, that they are simply just like you, but they just have unusual tastes. You then realise, despite the normality you think your life is based around, might be just as unusual to these people. You almost start to picture yourself in a Diane Arbus photograph, how would people view you if you were in a Diane Arbus portrait photograph?

Here are a few examples:






Cindy Sherman

"I didn't have any interest in traditional art. -
Cindy Sherman



Another famous portraiture photographer is Cindy Sherman. Much like Diane Arbus, Sherman's photographs are extremely unusual and bizarre, however her photographs are stylistically much more sexualised and tend to portray women in risque situations as though she has stumbled them by chance. Often her photographs include mannequins and models with sexual organs either sculpted onto them or (deliberately) missing parts that would imply sexuality in the model:

Originally Sherman, as a photographer, only took self portraits. These images, once released, launched her into fame and her pictures were titled "Film Stills" and they began a whole new form of photography. Her photographs were stylish, artsy and showed every day life almost like it was a movie.

"The still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told" - Cindy Sherman




If you look at the images, they do tease you with an almost unfolding story that, if you had further images or even a video, would reveal to you a narrative and a plot. Since there are no other images, you start to draw your own conclusions from the "story" the pictures are trying to tell you, leaving you to spend hours making up your own creative and interesting anecdote from one picture. This shows the power of photography at its finest, not only does a simply image provoke so many different subtexts and ideas that are left open to you to interpret, they make you want more so you are not left hanging. You want the full story, you want the image to turn into a movie so you know just what has happened before and after the still was taken. Hence the term "Movie Stills".

Since her rise to fame, Sherman has raised questions about the sexualisation of women in the media and artistic world. The pictures she has taken of mannequins with sexual organs shows her cynical attitude that women are often treated no better than objects by photographers and media producers. She places the mannequins in realistic and human like poses and makes them seem "indifferent" to their exploitation. It's almost if Sherman views the women who are perfectly happy to be exploited in this way as no better than these mannequins, a plastic model to be posed and exploited in any way chosen. However, a non-feminist or a man would perhaps miss the message of these photographs and view then ass simply being odd. The message the photographs contain rely completely on the open mindedness of the viewer, a closed minded person would completely overlook the message contained and see nothing but sexually abhorrent imagery.





Cindy also took historical portraiture photographs. They are intended to replicate the portrait oil-paintings that were largely replaced by portraiture photographs when the camera gained wide-spread adoption.




Conclusions

In my opinion, portraiture is as interesting as it is diverse. Portraiture can be a simple photograph of family members trying to preserve a moment, they could be photographs intended to show the difference in culture, ideology, and personal taste while at the same time proving we are all still human (shown in Diane Arbus' work), and they can be used to create a narrative or communicate a message. Just like any other form of photography, the message of the photograph, or its content, relies on the individual viewing them. This is the beauty of photography, the photograph is as much your own as it is the photographers, because only you and your own unique personality can really dictate what the photograph contains and what it really says to you through the imagery it contains.

Fashion Photography: The Polarising Effect of a Photograph

Fashion photography is a polarising subject to a lot of people. For many, it eschews the "dream" of beauty and stunning couture, something to aspire to, something to dream for. For many others, it is about the false image of beauty and the great lie contained within the images. Very few fashion publications escape the harsh opinions of those that see beauty as from within and not from without, especially when the magazines and publications are famous, no, infamous for greatly editing the models and images so much that the original image and the model are completely beyond recognition.

Where did this all come from? Why is it so hotly and viciously debated?

A Brief History

Photography began around the mid 1830's after the invention of the first camera. Though true fashion photography did not begin in earnet until the early 1900's when huge advances in halftone printing were achieved. The onset of this technology allowed fasion photographs to be published in magazines and newspapers.

However, the first true fashion model appeared in around 1860. Her name Virginia Oldoini, the Countess of Castiglione. She was a prominent noblewoman in Tuscany, and was the subject of the earliest examples of fashion photography

The View on and from Photojournalism

Photojournalism is a very interesting concept.

While normal photography is generally interpreted as the "Window to the World", it is not always an honest window at all. While the photo has captured a moment as it happened, or captured a person doing something, is that photo a true representation of what actually occured? Has it been manipulated in a subtle way to convey a message that contrasts with the actual content of the photo?

Such is the minefield of photography, as while the photo can be manipulated by the photographer to tell a completely different or even biased tale, the viewer can interpret it in their own way, too. This means, as hard as it may be to accept, that photography can be the biggest liar of them all, you just have to look past the image and see for yourself, if you look hard enough.

Take this image, for example, taken by Guy Tillim:



Outwardly, we see a large crowd of Congolese people at a gathering. The situation seems aggresive and suggests a protest that may turn violent. The man to the right is pointing to the left and shouting at someone off camera, and a dancer stands above the crowd, seemingly rousing them into fervour. Other subjects in the photograph seem equally aggresive and the overall aura suggests an undercurrent of unrest. But is that the actual truth?

The image is scarcely colourful, in fact the colours are very subdued and bordering on monochromatic, apart from a few select reds that "pop", ie your eye is drawn to them and they contrast massivelly from the rest of the colour pallette. Red, in the natural world and indeed psycholigically is seen as an aggressive and harmful colour, a colour that warns us, a colour that makes us feel uneasy, especially if presented in certain situations. The fact these colours are emphasised while others are subdued shows that the photographer may be trying to convince us the crowd is a seething mass of voilent and angry people, and this is shown nicely with the dancer wearing red also (again "rousing" the crowd into action).

The sky is overcast, which conveys a greater sense of foreboding, that something is about to happen and it wont turn out well. This deepens the subdued and monochrome colours.

If you look closely though, you can see no weapons, no metaphorical torches and pitchforks, as would typically be associated with a voilent crowd of protesters. Indeed, some of the people are raising their hands as if the crowd is a dance of celebration, not of violence. The face of the dancer seems happy, though her face seems very out of focus compared to some of the faces which, while further away and lost in the morass of people, seem clearer and sharper. What is interesting about this is while the dancers face (upon closer inspection) seems cheerful, the sharper and clearer faces seem emotionless.

What I can see in this photo is that there is far more than meets the eye. Select colours are emphasised to convey a different message than the actual reality of the situation unfolding before the photographers eyes. Although there isn't a lot of backstory to this photograph, it is hard to see why he would do this. Perhaps the protesters are sympathisers to the current (and oppressive) regime and the photographer does not want these people coming across as good people, despite their happy mood. It could also mean that, after a prolonged and bloody battle the winners are celebrating victory, but the photographer is trying to subdue the mood, as while it is a happy one, it rose from bloodshed which is not something ever to be celebrated.

However, the juxtaposition of photojournalism is that the photo is interpreted by the viewer as much as it is by the photographer. While Tillim may have been trying to make a certain statement about the content of his photograph, the end viewer is ultimately the one who makes the final decision about what they are seeing, and this can lead to a mixed message or even an altered message altogether. The person who sees the photograph will have different opinions based entirely on their personality, political views, maturity, opinions, and their personal outlook on life.

The above picture to an optimist may speak volumes of the human struggle of the people photographed at the rally, that their life of oppression and their commitment to changing this for the better is a wonderful thing. A pacifist may see the expressions on the faces of the crowd as aggresive and shameful, that violence to solve violence will and in a simple sidestep rather than a step forward. The subdued colours of the photograph may cry out to the pessimist and the ignorant. They would view the picture cynically and see it as just another pointless rally that will end in bloodshed and with no change at all. Someone who has viewed the picture fleetingly wouldn't see anything other than the bright flames of the fire and the red shirt of the protester mixed in with the monochrome colours and pick out these traits as a message of violence, the picture needs more deep viewing to really see that there is more to it than violence.

This is just one facet of photography and how it can be manipulated to bend the truth to the photographer's own views on the reality they have captured. But the other crucial facet is how, while the photographer may have been trying to communicate a certain emotion in the photo he has taken, may be lost completely to the person sitting at home viewing it in a newspaper or looking at it in a museum.