Thoughts on portraiture

Style

Today’s article is the first of two parts focusing on portraiture and human subjects as the focus of an image. It is not something I’m normally associated with because I rarely choose to show my work here; it doesn’t mean I don’t engage in it for personal reasons (which are usually not shared, obviously) or professional ones (I do have clients whose mainstay subjects are primarily human). Whilst curating images for a recent assignment, I had a couple of little personal epiphanies which I’d like to share with you all.

Determination

We humans are one of the few self-aware species on this planet, and certainly the only ones with any reliable means of reproducing our own or other fellow people’s likenesses (transitory reflections in water do not count). We are also a social species, which means that for the most part, we seek interaction with other humans; you could probably argue that we need this interaction to remain in good psychiatric health – perhaps it is a reminder that we are not alone, our actions affect others, and with higher consciousness comes both power and responsibility. I digress considerably.

Relaxation

Being a social species, we communicate; this is best done in person simply because out language is more than verbal or written. The same sentence can be said an infinitely different number of ways and even excluding context, the possibilities for interpretation are nearly boundless. Even the same word pronounced differently – take read and read, for instance – can have different meanings. More communication is done by facial expression than any other part of the body; researchers at Ohio State University have found there are roughly 21 different emotions or feelings that are expressed by facial gestures that are common across most human cultures, made by about 40 separate muscles (counting symmetry). There’s therefore a lot communicated that’s usually done inaudibly.

Toughness

Between this self-awareness and need for social communication, it is therefore not surprising that the photographic subjects we are most drawn to in general contain humans: even without any words, it is possible for us to generally infer the mood or actions of the subjects. However, this interpretation is usually without context – we as observers draw a conclusion based on the limits of our own experience and knowledge; if something does not have an analog in our own experience, our subconscious makes assumptions based on deeper unconscious memories (e.g. the emotional association between light = transparency/ honesty/ cleanliness and dark = mystery or danger).

Hesitation

There is one property of photography that is both a limitation and a unique strength of photography: the ability to preserve what is perceived by the conscious observer as an instant in time. In this case, ‘an instant’ is somewhat elastic, with the basic tenet that it is an interval short enough that we cannot perceive any change in the subject during this period. Still photography, therefore, forces us to choose our instants carefully: the emotion or expression captured on the face of a human subject may therefore be generally representative, or not, of a greater interval. Both are interesting to us: the exceptional and the fleeting give us an opportunity to consciously analyse moments which we might subconsciously register but not fully understand. The generally representative allow us to preserve memory: we now have a (hopefully) faithful approximation to a period, person or expression that we were able to consciously absorb at the time.

Idealism

Human subjects present a much greater challenge than static ones: we are never really the same at a consciously observable level from moment to moment; the photographer must therefore choose his captured moments with some care. We instantly have a subject that is both a source of never-ending variation (and thus images – there’s a reason why muses are almost always people) and challenge: how can you ever be sure you’ve fully and accurately represented the subject/person? Since this is clearly impossible with a dynamic subject, the only choices are to a) abandon the attempt; b) never stop taking photographs; or c) choose to portray only a limited subset of the subject’s personality. Realistically of course, c) is usually the only approach that is practical and socially acceptable.

Commitment

Perhaps then, this is where the skill of the great portrait artists – whether photographic or otherwise – comes into play. The subject can consciously only present one side of their personality to the artist/recorder, but a good artist really has to be both a good observer* to first decide what aspect of personality or attributes they would like the portrait to convey, and then convince the subject to display them. Notice that I didn’t say which aspects of personality are representative: there are many reasons to limit what is shown (a formal portrait of a military general might not want to hint at signs of emotional weakness, for instance – whereas the opposite would be true of a hospice worker). Even if the subject chooses to only show one side of their personally, the absence of some behaviours or emotions is equally telling. They say the great comedians are usually depressed: it makes sense that one extreme of emotion must be balanced somewhere by the other.

*And they have to be, in order to render things in a way that communicates noticed ideas in an understandable way.

Fun

We photographers must therefore understand psychology to some degree to be good portraitists, too – and not just so we can control the process to a degree that makes the impact of the output more certain amongst the target audience, but also so that we can understand our subjects and present them in the desired light.

People frequently say that a good portrait ‘captures the soul of the person’ – I have no idea how much of this is a derivative of primitive superstition from early photographs, (when there was an understanding gap of the technical process and the necessary bright flashes/ miniature explosions and bottles of chemicals probably didn’t help assuage fears either) and how much of this is merely a figure of speech – but the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced there’s some truth to it. Fortunately, our subjects are not literally captured in an image (the mind boggles when you think about what happens during repro processes – does the soul get more dilute or smaller every time?) but they should be in more than a metaphorical sense. A good portrait should really feel as though it’s communicating something about the subject – or perhaps to go a step further, the audience should feel as though they are communicating directly with the subject themselves.

Approachability

It is probably for this reason that the most accurate or emotionally sensitive/intimate portraits are made by people who have a relationship with the subject beyond the transactional; it’s very difficult to understand enough about somebody’s personality in a short span of time to at least subconsciously know what traits characterise an individual’s personality, much less get them to show them unselfconsciously. The best actors and models (and probably politicians/ musicians/ celebrities) can instantly project themselves as they want to be seen; this is very different from who they really might be when uninhibited.

Mystery

Perhaps this is the reason behind the modern obsession with selfies: we, the social species, care what the world thinks, and therefore must ensure that the side presented is the one we approve of. It isn’t narcissism so much as an attempt at personal PR and managed communications – it boils down to the awareness of self-image again. At the danger of slipping too far into psychology again, I’m going to suggest that being aware of oneself, feeling the need to change to be accepted into society, and then being able to accept one’s image without changing are very different states of personal development. In any case, it’s simply too bad that most selfie-addicts are not aware that a flattering perspective of a human necessarily requires a narrower angle of view, some physical distance because of this, and a good light source – you’re just never going to get what you want with a wide angle lens on the end of a stick.

Compassion

Perhaps this is the reason for the saturation of images: none of them feel quite right, but the creators don’t care or are unwilling to find out exactly why. Don’t get me wrong: making a representative self portrait is perhaps one of the most difficult things a photographer can do, because you must first decide exactly what it is about yourself that you want to show, how you’re going to express it, and then all of the compositional and executional challenges. I’ve only done it consciously a few times myself; usually when I firstly need an image of myself for something and I am convinced that it would be easier for me to execute it myself, and even then only when a previous image will not do because it is no longer representative of the way I perceive myself, or more importantly, the way I want to be perceived. Notice we are once again back to the relationship between photographer and subject – even if they happen to be one and the same*.

*Perhaps the reason why photographers tend to take so many images of themselves in reflective objects is that we are curious at a subconscious level about how we appear to the rest of the world, or want ourselves to be seen as a photographer instead of something else. Those ‘photographers’ whose self-portraits are both obviously arms’-length selfies and exclude a camera leave me wondering about what they’re really trying to say about themselves.

Achievement

I’m going to end part one with the following thought: a portrait isn’t really about the subject. At a much more fundamental level, it captures the relationship between the subject and the photographer, and precisely what and how much of that they choose to share with the rest of the world. This article has been illustrated with images where the subject has been a conscious participant – either people I know to varying degrees of familiarity through personal relationships, or simply professional clients. I think the difference between the two is quite obvious – it’s difficult to quantify in words, but I think perhaps ‘naturalness’ or ‘ease’ would be a good way of describing it. We are fascinated by people because in some ways, they dynamically reflect ourselves. By extension, this includes their representations and interpretations – especially those that are atypical or typical. We seek to preserve and perhaps understand these representations and relationships; both for the ones we have experienced personally – perhaps out of nostalgia or fondness, and those which are completely unfamiliar – out of social natures. But this only covers the half possibilities where the subject is conscious of the photographer – part two will deal with candids, street photography, and a theory called the ‘happiness barometer’. MT

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