This is the first chance, in this class, that we have had to
really explore the concept of photographing people. Portraiture is important for many reasons. A
photograph of a person is the only way to document exactly what they looked
like at that moment in time and save that memory for years to come. We can try
to remember what people looked like at a certain time in history, but none of
our memories will be as accurate as a photograph. Portraits can also convey the
different eras, decades, or certain times in history. They are very popular in
the media as well, such as fashion magazines. Gefter talks about how an
interesting theory about portraiture is that we can never be quite sure if the
portrait is actually of the subject, or if it is supposed to be a self-portrait
of the photographer.
Portraits used to be taken only of people who were well
known in society. Many artists succeeded in that practice, and many still do,
but there are lots of artists since then who have made an art of photographing
average people. I remember reading about a similar trend when I read the
section titled, “The Document”. Photography of seemingly ordinary things,
places, and people was not initially popular.
I was particularly interested in the small section about
Robert Mapplethorpe, which gave me the idea for my final project for this
class. He did close up portraits of his friends, which ended up resembling his
portraits of flowers. After going through his portraits of friends and flowers
online, I noticed that it was very easy to find a flower that looked like each
person and vice versa. They look really remarkable when placed next to one
another.
One artist that I did not quite understand was Thomas Ruff.
He did a series of very large headshots (like for a passport or driver’s
license) where the faces of the people were completely blank. I looked them up
online to see if maybe I was just missing something, and that was it. I must
just need to learn more about his style, because at first glance, his
photographs did not seem interesting to me.
I just found myself wondering, what is the point?
Gefter talks about Jack Pierson, which brings us back to the
idea of portraits being a self-portrait of the photographer. He did a series of
portraits of his friends, and each of them are supposed to represent him in
some way. I think that that is a very interesting idea. I know a lot of
photographers who hate being in front of a camera, and sometimes it’s easier to
find what you want in other people anyway. Sometimes it may seem to obvious to
use a picture of yourself to describe yourself. If you use a lot of portraits
of other people, you can focus on pinpointed aspects of yourself that you wish
to come across to viewers. Then there’s Cindy Sherman who takes portraits of
herself as different movie characters, which I think is another interesting
take on self-portraiture. Sometimes you don’t want to be yourself, or you want
to see yourself as someone completely different. Photographs are not a
permanent lifestyle change, so it gives you the change to play with the
performance of your identity and experiment with different ways of presenting
yourself.
Gefter touches on how portraits used to be authentic
representations of people. In today’s society, we are more conscious of how we
look because we know that there are ways to change how we look in a photograph.
Similar to the ideas we read about in the previous sections of this book,
authenticity and truth in photographs is something we question a lot more these
days. There is a lot of talk about how models in advertisements are being
photoshopped to look completely different from how they appear naturally.
Gefter also talks about how Fiona Tan blurred the line
between photographic portraiture and video portraiture. A photographic portrait
stops time and focuses on that one instance. A video lets you travel in time
that is still in the moment. Tan had her subject remain still in their video
portraits, which combines elements of the two practices. It is still a portrait
because the subject doesn’t move. However, everything around them is still
happening, still existing in continued time. This form of portraiture was even
more significant because her subjects were prisoners. They were essentially
trapped in the frame just like they were trapped in prison cells.
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