Project 1 - Studying portaits

There are so many examples of portaits around, that it is difficult to know what to include.

I started by looking back at my comments on portraits by various photographers.

Irvin Penn

My notes on Irving Penn exhibition at National Portrait Gallery were:-

- Portraits were taken mostly in a bare studio or room in black and white.

- In the later years his portraits were predominantly head and shoulders whereas in the early years most portraits were full length.

- The photographs were almost all taken at eye level.

- With a few exceptions, the photographs were in a square frame.

- He used background light and shadow to create a halo around the head and body, with strong sidelighting. For male subjects, he rarely seemed to add any light to the shaded side of the face/body.

- He often seemed to exaggerate the physical attributes of his subject: Men with prominent noses were taken in profile or using a short focal length e.g. Saul Below, Jacques Yves Cousteau. Alfred Hitchcock was posed sideways sitting down so that the looked as short and fat as possible. Audrey Hepburn seemed to have been photographed with a short focal length that exaggerated her snub nose. Francis Bacon was taken with a short focal length looking up in a way that exaggerated his broad lower face.

Henri Cartier-Bresson at Fondation Henri Cartier Bresson, Paris

In a film about HC-B, a woman whose portrait he had taken described how he held her in conversation. He waited until she was making a point when he suddenly took the photo which became the portrait. It was noticeable in the film that the portraits were taken when the subject was actively talking or gesticulating. Also the individuals were in their normal surroundings, not in a studio or set. This is totally unlike the Irving Penn portraits where most were in studio surroundings. For Bresson it seemed that the photographers purpose was to catch the subject's vitality and manner. For Penn it seemed that the photographer wanted to emphasize the persons physical peculiarities in a more static pose.

Photographic portrait prize 2011 - exhibition at National Portrait Gallery

In this years exhibition, I found quite a few of the photographs interesting:

Lara by Vivi Ableson

I thought that this photograph was quite effective as the teenage girl is facing the camera, with the backs of two much bigger men on either side. The girl is looking straight at the camera in a very natural way, and is showing some interest in her surroundings, whereas the two mens posture implies that they have been sitting for ages and are totally bored. I quite liked the other photographs in the same sequence "Infantes".

Charlie Watts by Michael Donald

The lighting interested me in this photograph. The figure has a "painterly" impact against the dark background. I felt that the artist must have used photographic lighting to achieve this effect, even though the viewer has the impression that the light is coming from a window on the left. The level of illumination on the shaded side of the face, and the darkness of the background do not quite seem natural.

Not even magic could stop the genocide by David Graham

In this photograph, I liked the blue-green colour and graduated lighting of the background which complements the red-brown jacket of the subject. I feel that this background strongly enlivens the visual qualities of the photograph.

Golfing sisters by Anita Corbin

This photograph seemed to capture the style and character of these two striking ladies beautifully, in an unusual composition.

General points I noted from the exhibition was that almost all the photographs were colour, but often muted colours and pastels. I also noted that there were a significant number of portaits of two people together, such as Lena and Katya by Michal Chelbin (maybe undermining the principle that odd numbers are more photogenic.)

Dmitri Kasterine and Mary McCartney - on display at National Portrait Gallery

It was interesting to study the contrasting styles of these photographers.

Dmitri Kasterine

Kasterine was active as a photographer in UK and USA for magazines, and is known for a close association with Stanley Kubrick. The portraits in NPG were mainly of famous cultural figures, painters, writers, actors. The portraits were black and white, they seem to have been taken in nature light with a plain wall or dark plants as background. The figures are sitting or standing still with quite solemn expressions looking directly at the camera. The sitters hands seemed to be particularly prominent (even where the hands are not visible e.g. Martin and Kingsley Amis are both standing with their hands in their pockets). The hands are clasped, or the arms folded, resting on the knees. His portrait of Samuel Beckett epitomises these characteristics.

Mary McCartney

The NPG collection of her photographs are mainly famous figures from the world of dance, fashion and other celebrities. The portraits are in colour, and there is a mix of interior and exterior scenes. The backgrounds of some are quite busy with bookshelves, office furniture etc. The characteristic that I particularly noted with her pictures is that the figures are almost all active. She seems to follow the style of Henri Cartier-Bresson of trying to take a photograph of the person at an expressive moment in a conversation. This style can be seen in her portrait of Billie Jean King.

Nadav Kander

I also reviewed found some interesting portraits on Nadav Kander's website.

In the "Portraits" section, there is an interesting collection of photographs. Most of the subjects are celebrities. He uses muted colours, blurring and lighting to make the subjects seem unreal with unnaturally pale skin colours. To my mind, his aim appears to portray these subjects as "icons" rather than people. In some cases, he even obscures the subject using blur (in the portrait of Robbie Williams), or a handkerchief (in the portrait of Henry Kissinger) to leave just enough of the features visible to allow identification of the subject.

In his series of photographs of "Obama's people" on the other hand, the style is more like an identity card photograph. The subjects are generally three-quarter length, photographed against a plain white background, with flat lighting. The poses and eye contact vary, but these are very different from the photographs of powerful people, sitting in luxury offices, behind large desks. The style and pose makes it seem that these are just ordinary people that one could find in any commercial office block. A strange way to look at the individuals who are responsible for the actions of the most powerful nation.

Conclusions

The range of styles of portrait photography noted above reflects the different intentions of the individual photographers. For me, in the preliminary stages of the course, my objective is to practice and understand the basic parameters of portraits and to appreciate the effects. It is clearly important for me to grasp and express my intentions in planning the photographs.