THE PORTRAIT
Defining Beauty
Through Avedon
Avedon was a photographer of women; he was known well for
his debonair portraits of women who were famously beautiful in his day, such as
Audrey Hepburn and Katharine Hepburn, and featured in magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. The way he captured these photographs were not in
a way of demoralizing women, but rather seeing them as a work of art; elongated
necks, stylish clothing and jewelry, and graceful poses all contributing his
capturing of beauty. He makes the photos seem spontaneous and make women who
look at them feel like “yeah, I could look like that too if I had that coat”. I
looked up his photography and it is all very beautiful and exemplifies modern
day fashion photography, and I think it is very inspirational and effective.
Self-portrait as
Obscure Object of Desire
This article was interesting in that it blurred the lines of
what self-identity really means in art. The artist Jack Pierson features images
of other people who aren’t himself in a collection and titles the group Self Portrait, alluding to the subjects
of his artwork encapsulating that which he wishes he could be. The way people
look at a photograph and idealize that they themselves were the one that was in
it – that is the idea that Pierson captures in his photography. Signature
styles like those of Avedon allude to a certain style matching a certain
artist, making his group of work essentially art about himself even though the
subject is not himself – therefore making something a “self-portrait”. Very interesting
stuff indeed!
Is That Portrait
Staring at Me?
Fiona Tan’s work is interesting in that she used prisoners
as her subjects and titled the piece Correction,
correlating to how prisoners are in jail to be corrected. What I really liked
was her use of video portrait as opposed to photography; the way that each
video clip of a person centered in the frame (like a portrait) but standing
completely still created an uncanny feeling. You can still tell that it is a
video because of the shifts of the eyeballs, blinking, or rustle of hair in the
wind. In a way the prisoners are trapped in the time of their video, just how
they are serving time in jail, trapped. I like how the medium of the art and
the subjects correlate to each other in that way, it is a very smart move.
A Pantheon of Arts and
Letters in Light and Shadow
Irving Penn was a photographer famous for portraiture of
celebrities, enough that he became just as famous as the celebrities himself.
He started out with the position by working for the magazine Vogue. The way he uses light and shadow
to highlight every detail of the subject in the photograph makes the subject
seem monumental, like they were Greek statues etched out of stone. He also
consideres his client the viewer of the photograph in her magazine at home,
rather than the subject; the utmost importance to Penn is that the reader is
able to find it intriguing, and to serve her. I particularly enjoy his portrait
of Picasso.
A Photographer’s Lie
This was the first article where the writer talked about the
photographer negatively. The artist being referred to was Annie Leibovitz and
her work titled A Photographer’s Life.
In the book she mixes portraits of celebrities ,which she was well known for,
with intimate picture of her lover named Susan Sontag. There is hardly any
emotional connection to the photos of Sontag even though they were apparently
together for 15 years; the book intermixing the personal photos of family and
lovers with celebrities makes the photos of celebrities seem like “commercial
breaks”. The writer describes Leibovitz as asserting her ego in this book and
being unsuccessful in her collection. Harsh, but seems true the way she
described it.
Embalming the American
Dreamer
Katy Grannan’s photograph collections are interesting,
especially her first one where she posted ads in a newspaper for models. The
people who responded were mostly young girls out of college, wanting to take
photographs as an act of rebellion against their family or boyfriends. Most did
secretly when their parents were away, showing how they were not yet women, but
still like kids. I found really cool Grannan’s interest in photographing
transgender people and her fascination with them as brave enough to change who
they fundamentally were and be able to live openly and proudly with that
change.
Personal Response
I found it very intriguing how Irvnig Penn said his customer
was not the subject he was taking a portrait of, but rather the viewer at home
looking at his picture in a magazine. In a way we all are taking photographs for others to look at and please their eye;
we want to captivate them with our art. It was also interesting how Avedon sees
all his portraits as self-portraits on the high level that he relates to them
himself (and I also like how he ties in with the last article in the chapter as
well). Overall a collection of very interesting readings concerning Portraiture.
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