Thanks to my colleague Simon I'm making headway with the technical aspects of getting some 'good' portraits. Whatever I mean by 'good' of course. More and more looking at other work and reading about its effects, purposes, outcomes etc. is simply confusing me at the moment. I began by looking at 'classic' 20th century portraits - Karsh, Newman, Horst, Sander and so on. Mostly, mainly black & white of course. They obviously have both great technical merit and in some ways create insights of a sort into the subjects. I was taken with the (no doubt well known to those interested in portraiture) anecdote about Karsh taking Churchill's cigar away from him, getting the grumpy look that kind of sums up the Churchill 'look' in the popular imagination. But does it really tell us anything insightful about the man or simply act as a symbol for a concept that is formed through our casual absorption of media ideas around a 'great life'.
I then moved on to other portrait work eventually - by way of more well know names (Arbus, Bown and many more) - to recent portraitists. Tina Barney is one, though as many of her pictures are ensembles it is less directly relevant to me. But one that has really got me thinking hard about the subject is Katy Grennan. I have in front of me her 2005 aperture book - Model American. Strangely, and co-incidentally, I chanced to read the back cover quote some time after I'd picked the book up and realised the quotation there came from Richard Misrach...who was one half of the subject for my first semester essay...
I think he sums up what I feel about " her confrontational images (are) formally smart, astonishingly intimate, and theoretically self-reflexive." Looking at 'Allen, b. 1951' I almost feel as if it could be me lying there and realise with a shock how vulnerable and open I'd feel if I'd posed in the manner Grennan has placed her subject. Why these pictures seem to hit the mark where much else I've seen seems remote and rather 'arch' I'm still trying to ascertain.
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