(British Journal of Photography, "Portrait Edition", December 2015)
Throughout my photographic
studies I have been dogged by two problems, which refuse to go away. Firstly I
have always believed that every project that I work on and every piece of work
that I produce has to have a purpose. From a photographic viewpoint the purpose
may be as simple as producing an image that has (for my eyes, at least)
aesthetic appeal or as complex as working on a photo book that expresses,
through text and images, general or specific environmental concerns. Secondly I
have never been interested in introducing “posed” portrait photography into my
practice. The only posed shots that I
take are of family and friends when on holiday or for special occasions.
However, as I read the British Journal of Photography (BJP) and visit graduate
exhibitions I feel that, on both counts, I’m in a minority. Every issue of the
BJP carries a high proportion of posed portraits and the December 2015 issue
was given over to portrait photography. Many of the portrait photographs and
projects described in every issue appear to have, at best, superficial purpose
and have apparently been created as “art for art’s sake”. The adjective
“playful” is sometimes used to describe this work, which for me carries very
little aesthetic appeal.
My partner and I visit the Taylor
Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition every year. Whereas the
portraits in BJP represent contemporary and “cutting edge” approaches to the
genre, Taylor Wessing claims to promote the very best in both traditional and
contemporary portrait photography. As I embark on a major project that will of
necessity involve the use of old family portraits I wondered if I could learn
anything from contemporary portraiture, as represented by the BJP and Taylor
Wessing, that I could feed into my own practice. I also wondered whether, by
studying the portraits, I could overcome what many might view as a somewhat
jaundiced view of contemporary portrait photography.
Taylor Wessing
Let’s start with the Taylor
Wessing exhibition. Of the thousands of portrait entries submitted for this,
apparently the most prestigious photographic portrait competition in the world,
just 50 (including the first to fourth prize winners) were included in the
exhibition. I assume, therefore, that this was the “Crème de la crème” of
portrait photography. Considering the group as a whole, one thing became very
clear: the sitter(s) must not be allowed to smile when having their portrait
taken! Only one photograph showed a smiling subject: I’ll come back to that
later. Typical of the group was the winning portrait, by David Stewart, of five
young women, including his daughter (Image 1).
Image 1 (David Stewart)
This 2014 photograph is one of a
pair, taken six years apart, of the same five girls/ladies. Since only the
contemporary image of the pair is exhibited, the visual impact of seeing how six
years of growing up and changing lifestyles has impacted on the subjects is
lost. It is true that the coffee cups and ubiquitous mobile phones tell a
story, but the generally glum expressions and the way in which the two girls on
the right are looking in a different direction to the others result in what,
for me, is a rather cool and detached photograph – not my winner! Elsewhere,
there is the usual collection of celebrity photographs (the Obamas look great,
but would the image of Benedict Cumberbatch have been included in the
exhibition if he had been an unknown, or am I missing the point?).
The National Portrait Gallery has
a new head of photography, Phillip Prodger, and one or two changes have been
made for this year’s exhibition. A few photographers have been allowed to
exhibit two or (in one case) three photographs from larger series, so that the
stories behind the portraits can be better understood. However, there are also
single photographs from what I know to be large projects. These photographs
don’t seem to be particularly strong of their own accord and I struggle to
understand how they can be seen as winning entries. Babies feature too – here
the props become important because babies can’t be told to smile, scowl or look
in a particular direction. Predictably there are also traditional portraits of
people who are part of a recent or ongoing crisis situation, such as refugees
fleeing conflict in the Middle East. Is a photograph of a refugee more worthy
of success than one of a citizen who has never been in a war zone?
My own, probably naïve point of
view is that an outstanding portrait should go beyond mere technical excellence
and tell us something about the subject(s); their personalities, their
situation, their aspirations. If we have to be told the background to the
photograph through text on a separate panel in order to understand its origin
and meaning then surely the image has, at best, only partly succeeded. For this
reason I would have selected the only image of a truly happy, smiling subject,
the young Ugandan boy in Mark Chivers’ excellent classroom photograph (Image 2),
as my winner. The other pupils’ expressions, as well as the charts on the
classroom wall and the desks, tell the story and do this with a smile. What’s
wrong with photographs that make you feel uplifted?
Image 2 (Mark Chivers)
British Journal of Photography (BJP)
When is a portrait not a
portrait? The December 2015 issue of BJP features portrait images in which the
subject’s face has been obscured, hidden, defaced or completely removed. The
editor comments that a wealth of suitable projects had been found for this
issue – “maybe because…..photographers and curators have become interested in
portraits that do something different”. I guess that this is the driving force
behind photographic art – the necessity to go in new directions and to try
something different. Unfortunately not every new idea works. Some will go down
blind alleys and, whilst each of the featured projects clearly impressed the
BJP team, many failed to impress me.
On the positive side, Jack
Davison’s obscured or defaced portraits (see Image 3) are full of imagination,
have atmosphere and aesthetic appeal. Robin Hammond’s photographs of Lesbian
and Gay people, living in countries where they could be persecuted or even executed simply because they are found
to be practicing homosexuals, show their faces hidden out of necessity.
Image 3 (Jack Davison)
Other featured projects offer
less justification for the faces being obscured and Eric Kessels’ discarded
beach photographs (Image 4) reach new heights as non-portraits. Polaroids
produced by another photographer, in each of which circles have been cut out to
remove the sitters’ faces (apparently in order to attach the resultant circular
prints to badges) are, to say the least, rather bizarre. Apparently in the
absence of the faces (and, in many cases, most of the torso and arms) the
viewer is forced to look at and make sense of the subject’s surroundings. I
just stared at the white circles: perhaps I lack the sense of humour to
appreciate this “playful” series – which was published by Kessels as a book,
part of a bigger series called “In Almost Every Picture”. In a BJP interview
Kessels asks: “what is the end of the photograph?” I think that I know the
answer.
Image 4 (Eric Kessels)
All is not lost, however.
Jean-Francois Leroy, founder and director of the “Visa Pour L’image” festival, apparently
holds similar views to my own. In a heated discussion at the
festival, reported in BJP, he is quoted as saying that portraits can be “a lazy
way to tell a story” and that “I’m tired of seeing series where each sitter is
interchangeable. What do the faces of 25 earthquake victims, tsunami survivors
or Syrian refugees tell me about the situation they find themselves in?
Nothing. Collecting individual tales does not tell a collective story”. I agree.
He highlights how Steve McCurry’s famous portrait, Afghan Girl, “strikes like a punch would. It stands out, moves you
and makes you think. However, had McCurry produced a series of 50 portraits she
would not have been as remarkable”. Leroy is talking about photojournalism
here, but I believe that his comments could be applied to other genres. He
mentions that he is supportive of series, such as Robin Hammond’s (see above),
which “breathe sincerity and commitment”. BJP summarises Leroy’s views as: “illustrative and systematic portraits, bad;
stirring one-offs, particularly in the context of a wider story, good. It’s an
unfashionable perspective, and one that may come across to some as
retrograde….” I guess that this last comment sums up my own views on portrait photography as
well: unfashionably retrograde.
Sadly, I cannot say that the
portraits discussed here have changed my views about portrait photography or
photography in general, although Jack Davison’s work (for example Image 3) is
thought-provoking and may be of relevance to my current project. It is,
however, pleasing to know that a small minority in the world of photographic
art, such as Jean-Francois Leroy, hold similar views to my own.
No comments:
Post a Comment