Eye contact and expression - Taylor Wessing Portraits

Just before Christmas, I went to see the exhibition of entries and winners of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait competition 2011. As I was thinking about the "Eye Contact and Expression" project 5, I was looking particularly at the portraits where the subject was not looking at the camera. My notes on some of these photos are below.

Peter Crouch by Spencer Murphy

Peter Crouch is a footballer (Wikipedia says he is striker for Stoke City) and according to the exhibition notes, the photograph was taken soon after he came off the pitch from a match. His eyes are looking to the left and ever so slightly up and there is no indication that he is looking at anything in particular. His head is not quite upright and his facial expression is relatively unexpressive as if he is reflecting on something or maybe just waiting. He certainly does not seem conscious of the camera. Possibly he is drained of energy and adrenaline, or alternatively, maybe his team had been beaten and he is reflecting on missed opportunities.

Looking through Spencer Murphy's website, portraiture is a major part of this work, and for example, he has done commissions for a number of magazine covers. The majority of the portraits on his website are men, and most of them are looking away from the lens. I was surprised how often he uses a plain offwhite background. Also, it is unusual that in some of his portraits of sportsmen, he uses a strong sidelight on the "narrow" side of the face or figure, away from the camera.

Lola's husband by Frank Balbi Hansen

I could not locate a website for this photographer or photograph. The portrait shows the head and shoulders of a mature, smartly dressed lady on the left of a landscape shaped frame. In the right background is an old fashioned photograph of a man, presumably her husband. The lady's eyes are looking up and away from the camera, as if she is reminiscing about her husband and past experiences. As in the previous example, there is no sign that she is looking at anything.

The slightly unnerving feature that I noticed in this photograph is that the eyes of her husband appear to be looking directly at the lens.

Terry by Simon Bremner

In this photograph, we see the head and shoulders of a woman seated at a table next to the window of a cafe. She is looking sideways out of the window but it does not appear that she is looking at anything. She seems wistful, maybe slightly troubled, maybe just waiting.

Looking at Simon Bremners website, his photographs are almost all photographs of people. A prorportion are not portraits of individuals, but rather staged scenes portraying a narrative, for example a boy at the edge of a fairground with a sack over his shoulder as if he is leaving home.

Conclusions

Looking at these portraits and some others during this course, I feel that the impact of eye contact or lack of it on a viewer can be understood if one imagines how a viewer would react if he or she were in the room with the subject:-

• There were a number of portraits in the exhibition of couples looking at each other or with one looking at the other. Even though neither subject was looking at the lens, there was no feeling of social tension in my mind whilst observing the subjects together.
• Similarly, in one of the active portraits of my brother in law, Keith, he is looking down at the hoe, not looking at the camera lens. There is similarly no feeling of strangeness watching him at work.
• Where an individual subject is looking at the lens, there seems to be an interaction between the viewer and the subject somewhat similar to meeting another person. In most cases the interaction is interesting rather than disturbing.

In contrast, where the subject is an individual looking away from the camera lens, I get a feeling of discomfiture or edginess. It is like being in a room with another person who is in their own private world. Staring at someone in this condition is not something I would normally do.

It also struck me that an individual can be seen more as a physical object when they are looking away from the camera lens. This struck me most forcibly looking at a fashion photography exhibition "Northern Women in Chanel" by Peter and Ingela Farago at Fotografiska in Stockholm last August. The models are hardly ever looking at the lens and hence the clothes and stance of the model draws the viewers attention, rather than their faces. Where a model is looking at the lens, however, the visual impact of the clothes seems to recede and the models personality comes to the fore.

I thought that Spencer Murphy's portraits showed a similar effect. Where his subject is looking away from the lens, the physical features of the head and face seemed more important visually, than the individual. There is no comment by Spencer Murphy on the reason for using this style of portrait quite frequently.