Photographic Portraiture and the Honorific Representation of Particular Subjects - Essay Example

?EXAMINE HOW PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITURE HAS OFTEN BEEN UTILIZED FOR THE HONORIFIC REPRESENTATION AND/OR SUBJUGATION OF PARTICULAR S Institution In the photographic practice early ages, one can detect a yearning of rendering photography as a painting continuation. In that note, early photographers were trying to shoot pictures that resembled portraits. Portrait portraiture or photography is taking photos of an individual or crowd of people, which exhibits the personality, expression, as well as the subject’s mood (Castleman 2007) and (Bazin 2005). Like other forms of portrait making, the photograph focus is normally the individual's face, though the entire body as well as the context or background may be encompassed. Photographic portraitures use a number of methodologies in representing their subjects. Such approaches include environmental, constructionist, creative and candid (Jones 2002), (Lacoue-Labarthe 2006) and (Keating 2006). This paper, therefore, aims to examine how photographic portraiture regularly been utilized for the honorific representation and/or subjugation of particular subjects. Below is a photo from 1865by Cameron Julia Margaret (Figure 1). People have a tendency of underestimating the value of colours in their perception of white and black photographs (Sobieszek 2009), (Castleman 2007) and (Bazin 2005). Anyone who sees the picture for the first moment might definitely think the photo is a colourless ancient image. Nevertheless, this picture is not pallid. In contrast its shade is very effectual. So efficient that it could induce the indication of a statue. The greyish-brown, which governs the image, resembles a shade of a statue aged and dirtied with time. Furthermore, the grains generating that shade are noticeable and they provide the feeling that the 2 figures possess a coarse body, composed of tiny particles, which can be felt when stroked, like the marble, and clay particles or other deposits that can be felt when touching a sculpture. This photographer has used an environmental approach where the subjects are represented within their environment (Jones 2002), (Lacoue-Labarthe 2006) and (Keating 2006). Figure 1. Julia Margaret Cameron, Divine Love, Mary Hillier 1865. Image reproduction in Helmut Gernsheim, Julia Margaret Cameron: Her Life and Photographic Work, London : Gordon Fraser, 1975,13. Nevertheless, texture and colour are never the only features of the photo, which establishes a sculptural look (Sobieszek 2009) and (Castleman 2007). The two figures’ posture, their motionlessness without any suggestion of exhaustion, their subtle bond with each other wherein the woman embraces the child incredibly gently as well as touches his forehead with an affectionate kiss, augments the sculptural look of this photo by giving the feeling that each gesture is thoroughly calculated, arranged, and executed without leaving room for opening, or unpredicted occurrences, which would sharply distort the image (Castleman 2007), (Caffin 2003) and (Owens 2002). Bearing all these in mind, some questions concerning the image’s nature could be enquired like: Why the image has a sculptural look? Why the subjects pose in that manner? Is it likely that they denote a child and his mother? Why are the mother and the child garbed in old-fashion apparels, then? Are they imitating or acting other pictures, other postures. Are they impersonating Christian iconography? To answer these questions in detail, it is important toexplore the primary outset of photography (Sobieszek 2009), (Flusser 2008) and (Castleman 2007). The portraiture usage was not detached from its exploitive use. Starting with being an inexpensively affordable artistic pleasure, photography developed afterward a useful social machine that generated a social collection containing as well as forming the bits of the figures of "inferiors" and "betters"Sobieszek 2009), (Flusser 2008) and (Castleman 2007).Therefore, delivering a listing of leaders, heroes, celebrities, moral exemplars, and of the deprived, the sick, the crazy, the offender, the female and the non-white(Jones 2002), (Lacoue-Labarthe 2006) and (Keating 2006). Those personalities were created via different social establishments of the era as well as photographic camera portrayed a crucial role during that process (Bazin 2005), (Sobieszek 2009) and (Flusser 2008). As early on as 1843-1844, police units in throughout Europe began to utilize photos in the search for criminals (Bazin 2005), (Sobieszek 2009), (Flusser 2008) and (Castleman 2007). Diamond Hugh Welsh was take pictures of the insane countenance in Great-Britain. Louis Agassiz, an ethnographer, had daguerreotypes shot of the American slaves. Andre-Adolphe-Eugene Disderi, a society portraitist, patented his chief carte-de-visite (Sobieszek 2009), (Flusser 2008) and (Castleman 2007). All these psychiatric, medical, ethnographic/anthropological, judiciary and scopophilic programs of the era utilized portraiture to represent the look of a particular person or form, without the idealising or flattering aims of creative portraiture (Flusser 2008), (Caffin 2003) and (Owens 2002). On top of these, Tagg John (2008) in his manuscript‘ The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories’ contends that the apparent photography character at its beginning, cannot be detached from the novel practices of record keeping and observation of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth era European communities. These practices enact a crucial function in the expansion of a system of disciplinary establishments, for example the prisons, police, hospitals, asylums, divisions of schools, and public health, and they conceal novel and strategically linked discourses that operate as instruments of power creating novel items and identities (Hammond 2003), (Caffin 2003) and (Sekula 2010). In spite of this "objective" photography power, operating on a diverse degree than the arty demesne, there were; however, several photographers who asserted that photography might be skill if the snapper could accentuate her or his superiority upon the apparatus’ limitations. Nonetheless, to attain such a free will was never simple (Tagg 2008), (Sobieszek 2009) and (Sekula 2010) and (Tagg 2008). The settings of photography practice were dissimilar when likened to other graphic representations practices. Comparing the manner the photographer and the painter handle their subjects, Caffin (2003) maintains that the portraitist can modify and correct his subject's posture. Nevertheless, the snapper must use tools, for example, head clamps to ensure the subject remain immobile as well as avoid any distorting within the image, whereas simultaneously, he or she has to keep the subject from the repressive sense of being worked on (Sobieszek 2009), (Flusser 2008) and (Castleman 2007). It was possibly on account of this that the earliest photographers were named operators (Hammond 2003), (Caffin 2003) and (Sekula 2010). Nevertheless, these operators so as to reduce the scientific environment created through the photographic scenery and to ensure the photograph appeared like other arty representations were as well as operating upon their subjects and the structure, by enacting the poses, the backgrounds, and through adopting the representation design of other creations (Sobieszek 2009) and (Kaja 2006) and (Barthes 2007). In Margaret’s image (see Figure 1), for instance, it is clear that the image is trying to represent a Christian iconography as well as there is an inspiration from the sculptural traditional practice, especially if both photographers and sculptors had to propose certain shades only through a shade and light distribution. Nevertheless, painting has constantly been believed to be greatly influential upon early picture making than sculpture (Keating 2006), (Tagg 2008) and (Barthes 2007). In fact skilled snappers had similar scenic equipment as painters within their workshop (Jones 2002), (Sobieszek 2009) and (Lacoue-Labarthe 2006). The painted scenery, the brocade curtain knotted back with a hefty thread and the embroidery footrest not only represented the style of the subject but also established some richness and movement in the stationary setting of the earliest photographic workshops (Tagg 2008) and (Kaja 2006) and (Barthes 2007) . Figure 2. ‘Nadar Gaspard Felix Tournachon, Sarah Bernhardt, 1859. Image reproduction in Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography: From 1839 to the present day, London: Secker and Warburg, 1965, 54. This rapport between photography and painting can as well be seen in the postures of the structure (Tagg 2008), (Lacoue-Labarthe 2006) and (Keating 2006). For instance, in the representations of the well-known French portrait snapper, Nadar Gaspard Felix Tournachon, where he shot the picture of the Sarah Bernhard, an actress, (see Figure 2), traces of traditional painterly tradition can be seen, for instance, in choosing a superstar as his subject, and imposing upon her a pose that can be got in numerous painted representations of the same age, for instance, the portrayal of Mme. Ines Moitessier by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (see Figure 3). This image employs a constructionist approach in which it reveals an image of a prominent person. Figure 3. Auguste Dominique Ingres, Mme. Ines Moitessier Seated, 1856, Image reproduction in Robert Rosenblum, Ingres, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975, 165. Comparing these two imageries, it can be seen that both portraits have famous, powerful women as their focus. Furthermore, their models are represented in a pose adopted from classical dignitaries (Jones 2002), (Lacoue-Labarthe 2006) and (Keating 2006). The gesture that both models share where the right-hand is positioned delicately upon the face, as well as which may be deduced both to denote sign of tranquillity and reflection, is a gesticulation found within other classical images, for instance, the Frescoes’ photograph Herculaneum(see Figure 4). Frescoes’ image employs an environmental approach of subjects being represented within their environment (Sobieszek 2009), (Flusser 2008) and (Castleman 2007). Up to currently the classical discussion has been brought up though the discovery of photography during 19th era concerning the position of photography in the arty realm, as well as how this debate ensued in a yearning and effort to render photography appear like earlier artistic representations (Tagg 2008), (Sobieszek 2009) and (Keating 2006). Figure 4. ‘Fresco Roman from Herculaneum, Hercules & Telephus. Image reproduction in Michael D. Gunther / www.art-and-archaeology.com’ Conclusively, photographic portraiture has, therefore, been utilized for the honorific representation of particular subjects as seen in the Cameron’s Nadar’s, Fresco’s and Auguste’s photographs. Cameron’s photograph of a mother and her child represent a Christian iconography as well as an influence of traditional sculptural practice in the subject’s mode of dressing that denotes that is old and dirtied (Sobieszek 2009), (Flusser 2008) and (Castleman 2007). Photographic portraitures reveal the mood, personality and expression of a person (Keating 2006) as seen in the Cameron’s image of a mother and the child, in which the mood of the mother can be revealed in the way the mother places a tender kiss on the child’s head. This denotes affection the mother has on the child. The photograph attempts to honor a Christian iconography. The same is depicted is depicted in Nadar’s imagery in which the pose her image of Sarah Bernhardt reveals bits of traditional sculptural practice as seen in Auguste’s image. It is evident that photographic portraitures employ constructionist, candid, creative and environmental approaches wherein these approaches are employed for various reasons such as cultural like in Frescoes’ Hercules and Telephus image (Jones 2002), (Lacoue-Labarthe 2006) and (Keating 2006). Foot Notes 1Barthes, Roland. 2007 Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, New York: Hill &Wang. 2 Bazin, Andre. 2005 "The Ontology of the Photographic Image," What is Cinema, London : University of California Press. 3 Caffin, H. Charles. 2003 Photography as a Fine Art, New York : Morgan & Morgan. 4Castleman, William L. 2007 EF 85 f/1.8 vs EF 100 f/2 vs EF 135 f/2: Is there a detectable difference in perspective? (3rd ed.) 5Flusser, Vilem. 2008 Towards a Philosophy of Photography. 6Hammond, Arthur. 2003 "Pictorial Composition in Photography". 7Jones, Amelia. 2002 "The 'Eternal Return': Self-Portrait photography as a Technology of Embodiment". Journal of Women in Culture and Society , vol. 27, no 4. University of Chicago Press. 8 Kaja,Silverman. 2006 The Threshold of the Visible World , London : Routledge. 9Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. 2006 Theatre Des Realities, Paris: Caves Sainte-Croix . 10 Owens, Craig. 2002 "Posing" Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture, Oxford: University of California Press. 11Sekula, Allan. 2010 "The Body and the Archive" The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography , ed. Richard Bolton. London : Mit Press. 12 Keating, Patrick. 2006 "From the Portrait to the Close-Up: Gender and Technology in Still Photography and Hollywood Cinematography", page 91, Cinema Journal 45, No. 3, 13 Sobieszek, A. Robert. 2009 Ghost in the Shell: Photography and the Human Soul 1850-2000, Essays on Camera Portraiture, California : Los Angeles Country Museum of Art. 14 Tagg, John. 2008 The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories, London: The Ma Sobieszek cmillan Press. Bibliography Barthes, Roland. 2007 Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography . Trans. Richard New York: Hill and Wang. Bazin, Andre. 2005. "The Ontology of the Photographic Image." What is Cinema. Trans. Hugh Gray. London : University of California Press. Caffin, H. Charles. 2003 Photography as a Fine Art. New York : Morgan & Morgan. Castleman, William L. 2007 EF 85 f/1.8 vs EF 100 f/2 vs EF 135 f/2: Is there a detectable difference in perspective? (3rd ed.) Flusser, Vilem. 2008 Towards a Philosophy of Photography. Hammond, Arthur. 2003 "Pictorial Composition in Photography". Jones, Amelia. 2002 "The 'Eternal Return': Self-Portrait photography as a Technology of Embodiment". Journal of Women in Culture and Society , vol .27, no 4. University of Chicago Press. Keating, Patrick. 2006 "From the Portrait to the Close-Up: Gender and Technology in Still Photography and Hollywood Cinematography", page 91, Cinema Journal 45, No. 3, Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. 1996. Theatre Des Realites, Paris: Caves Sainte-Croix . Owens, Craig. 2002 "Posing" Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture, Oxford: University of California Press. Sekula, Allan. 2010 "The Body and the Archive" The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography , ed. Richard Bolton. London : Mit Press. Silverman, Kaja. 2006 The Treshold of the Visible World , London : Routledge. Sobieszek, A. Robert. 2009 Ghost in the Shell: Photography and the Human Soul 1850-2000, Essays on Camera Portraiture, California : Los Angeles Country Museum of Art. Tagg, John. 2008 The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories, London: The Macmillan Press.   Read More