The Art of Photography - Essay Example

A portrait in a general meaning of the word is a painting, photograph, or other artistic representation of a person. Portraits are often simple head shots or mug shots and are not usually overly elaborate. The intent is to show the basic appearance of the person, and occasionally some artistic insight into his or her personality. The art of the portrait flourished in Roman sculptures, where sitters demanded realistic portraits, even unflattering ones. During the 4th century, the portrait began to retreat in favor of an idealized symbol of what that person looked like. (Compare the portraits of Roman Emperors Constantine I and Theodosius I at their entries.) In Europe true portraits of the outward appearance of individuals re-emerged in the late Middle Ages, in Burgundy and France. One of best-known portraits in the Western world is Leonardo da Vinci's painting titled Mona Lisa, which is a painting of an unidentified woman. Some of the earliest portraits of people who were not kings or emperors, are the funeral portraits that survived in the dry climate of Egypt's Fayum district. These are the only paintings of the Roman period that have survived, aside from frescos. An often neglected form of art in photography is that of portrait photography. A portrait is the basic rendering of someone's likeness. A good portrait photographer not only wants to capture the true likeness, but also the personality of the individual. The photographer needs to be proficient not only in the workings and setting of the camera, but also needs to understand form and lighting. Great lighting and positioning can make someone appear at their best form if used correctly. Lighting and camera placement can also aid in correcting defects such as shortening a nose, making someone appear slimmer, etc. In this form of art, portrait photography takes on many roles, and can help create various moods that the individual is seeking (Clarke 12). Portrait photography is a popular commercial industry all over the world. Many people enjoy having professionally made family portraits to hang in their house, or special portraits to commemorate certain events, such as graduations or weddings. Since the dawn of photography people have made portraits. The popularity of the daguerreotype in the middle of the 19th century was due in large part to the demand for inexpensive portraiture. Studios sprang up in cities around the world, some cranking out more than 500 plates a day. The style of these early works reflected the technical challenges associated with 30-second exposure times and the painterly aesthetic of the time. Subjects were generally seated against plain backgrounds and lit with the soft light of an overhead window and whatever else could be reflected with mirrors (Freeman 32-33). Change in photography - the optimist would call it progress - has a number of drivers. Changes in technology, changes in the marketplace and the need for a creative individual to do new things are among the more important. Of course these interact strongly, particularly in the case of the last two, as even the most creative among us need to eat. So when we consider how photographic portraiture has developed through any period of time, one vital consideration is the changes in the various market sectors that use it. Of course some market areas are conservative by nature, perhaps most strongly the bread and butter studio portrait for the general public. Even within this constrained genre there have of course been photographers whose work stands out, many who remain unsung, others who by accident of fortune achieve fame, even if posthumously - such as the great body of portraits by Michael Disfarmer - perhaps one day the subject for another feature. Arguably the greatest area of development in portrait photography from the 30's to the 50's was the illustrated magazine, for which many of the finest portrait photographers work. A good example is Bill Brandt, who produced striking photographs of literary, musical and artistic figures in the late 40s and early 50s. Few of these great magazines remain (and then only as a shadow of their former selves) but there are still many talented portrait photographers working away in their successors such as the various newspaper supplements, as well as special interest magazines. Although the market for photojournalism has shrunk greatly, there is a great and perhaps increasing demand for celebrity portraiture. However it is perhaps a series of developments in the music industry that have had most impact on portraiture over the last 40 or so years. The introduction of the 12-inch long playing record and the start of 'Rock and Roll' was a real jolt in the creative arm for photography. Lee Friedlander produced fine work, mainly for jazz albums, working with producer and executive Neshui Ertegun at Atlantic Records, and photographers such as Jim Marshall produced iconic images of rock and roll heroes. In the early 1960's the focus of pop music shifted. Along with the new expansion in pop based on London and Liverpool came a renewed interest in pop magazines, some new, some old-established titles that changed with the pop charts. As well as pop magazines there was also a range of 'style' magazines, concentrating on pop culture and the work of the new and trendy designers and makers. The magazines wanted new and exciting photography - mainly portraiture and fashion - and there was no shortage of young photographers ready to give them just that (Lenman 60-64). Anton Corbijn (pronounced Korr-beyn) was born in Holland in 1955. In 1972 he borrowed a camera from his father (a protestant pastor) and took it to photograph an open-air rock concert by the band 'Solution' in Groningen. He was hooked from that moment on and began photographing music seriously. In 1979 he came to live in London because that was where his favorite post-punk groups were based and where they could most often be heard and photographed. In London he worked for the New Musical Express, the leading UK weekly pop music paper. He met other photographers who worked for the NME during the six years or so he worked there, as well as getting to know bands he photographed, such as Captain Beefheart, U2 and Depeche Mode. Since 1985 he has photographed for a wide range of magazines worldwide, including Rolling Stone, Elle, Esquire and Stern, producing portraits mainly of people in the arts and particularly in pop music. He has also shot many record covers, including those for U2, John Lee Hooker, the Rolling Stones, Nick Cave and Depeche Mode. Over the last 18 months he has worked with Amsterdam painter Marlene Dumas on striptease, producing an exhibition, which has its first showing in Belgium in Sept 2000 with 15 works by each of them. Corbijn has also made over 60 pop videos for leading groups and also a short film on Captain Beefheart for the BBC. His work has been exhibited widely around the world. Much of Corbijns best work is in black and white (though it may be toned blue or brown etc) and generally has a strong and elegant simplicity. His subjects sit or stand, usually facing the camera, often holding a simple prop such as a hat. They are photographed in simple but carefully chosen or constructed backgrounds - sometimes a studio with a few props, sometime on location. His portrait of a no longer young, but still eminently desirable, Marianne Faithfull was taken in her hotel room in 1990. Corbijn has positioned her and his camera so that the black sweep of the curtain edge in the background continues exactly in the line of her black bra. The curtains mimic the shape of this, although upside-down, the light between them mirroring her cleavage. She sits facing the photographer at a table, one elbow resting on it with her hand holding a cigarette to her mouth, the other arm resting on the table in front of her torso. There is a large coffee cup on the table in front of her - this is her taking breakfast, not quite ready to meet the world - her head slightly at an angle and eyes half-closed and looking down. He photographed David Bowie in 1980 in the dressing room where he was playing in the stage play 'The Elephant Man'. Bowie wears only a loincloth as he leans against a wood-grained wall, his hands held loosely together on his chest. There is something of a religious feel to his pose and the way he looks pensively out into space to the right of the picture. There is a suggestion of vulnerability and innocence that make this image totally appealing. Corbijn photographs people in quiet moments, away from the stage or their work. Few of his subjects are allowed to smile - they are serious or pensive. Backgrounds are generally chosen to be simple, even stark - often a plain wall - or to add to the mood without distracting. Photographically the pictures are simple, normally using available light. His plain, straightforward, approach perhaps reflects his Protestant background. Although there is an element of planning in his work he tries to react and respond to this subject. As he says, "My biggest fear always is that I'll photograph an idea rather than a person, so I try to be quite sensitive to how people are." (http://www.corbijn.co.uk) His approach seems to get beyond the surface and the obvious act, and to disclose a little of the reality behind the image. When asked about his influences, Corbijn first mentioned Robert Frank, going on to name "somebody called W Eugene Smith, Josef Sudek, Irving Penn, amongst others." Corbijn isn't a very technical photographer - his work is about attitudes, not techniques. Normally he works with a single camera which subjects find less intimidating as he builds up a rapport with them before taking his pictures. In the old days it was a 35mm Nikon, but now it is a Hassleblad, and he has a spare body and several lenses. Another photographer who has worked for some years at the New Musical Express is Derek Ridgers. Ridgers trained as a graphic artist and went into advertising, where he worked as an Art Director for ten years. One of his clients was a camera company and he picked up the product and gave it a try. Among his first real published work was a series taken on a second-hand Nikkormat, which he bought as a cheap camera and started taking it to punk performances at the Hammersmith Palais, where he pogo'd up and down with the best of them while photographing. To get the kind of results he wanted, Ridgers attached a flash to the camera using a homemade bracket, a bent wire coat hanger. It did the job and the pictures were published. Before long his pictures taken here and in some of London's more extreme clubs were attracting attention, and he had an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the leading 'cutting edge' arts venue in the UK. Ridgers still works for the NME, although his work has at various times appeared in many other places, including The Face and the Telegraph magazine. As well as pop photography, he has specialized in photographing various youth subcultures, including work on fetish clubs and body piercing. This has also achieved wide publication in a rather eclectic range of magazines and books. He has also completed a project on homeless people living on the streets and photographed the drug scene. He has been working for 25 years on the club scene in London, concentrating, as he says, on "certain clubs and some excessive looking people. Some of the people I'm interested in, I will have photographed and got to know over a 10 year period." Ridgers hopes publish a book of this work, 'DARK CARNIVAL - Portraits from the endless night, 1977-2001', shortly. References on the web to his work are largely scattered around the fan sites of the many groups for which he has shot record covers. Unfortunately where these include pictures the reproduction quality is poor. Among the various artists and groups of whom he has taken some of the definitive pictures are Stone Roses, Cocteau Twins, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Pet Shop Boys, Elvis Costello, Keith Richards and Sinead O'Connor. Ridgers's work has shown an increasing subtlety of techniques, and like Corbijn he moved from 35mm to medium format, though preferring a 6x7 format. His approach to the subjects perhaps has a sharper edge and more often reflects the photographer's ideas - as one might expect from a former art director. Of course many of his subjects have had little idea about the kind of photograph they wanted, and many of the ideas they do come up with are essentially non-visual or incapable of being translated into visual form, and Ridgers' pictures have crystallized an image for a number of nascent UK and USA groups. Many different approaches to portraiture can be successful. All the contemporary photographers share three characteristics - trust, empathy and professionalism. Each has obviously established a relationship in which their subjects are prepared to trust them, each obviously has an insight into the feelings and needs of their subject, and all have a mastery of their methods and techniques. As well as an evident enthusiasm, there is a kind of simplicity in each of their work that has come from the careful honing of those things they need and the elimination of the superfluous. Perhaps there we have the secret of success in portraiture. Works Cited: 1. Freeman, Peter. Photography and The Art of Seeing. Key Porter Books, 1989. 2. Clarke, Graham. The Photograph. Oxford History of Art. Oxford University Press, 1997. 3. Online. 29 Nov. 2005 4. The Oxford Companion to the Photograph, ed. by Robin Lenman, Oxford University Press, 2005 Read More