The Next Big Portrait
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Many years ago I posed the following question to my Mexico City high school class.
What would happen if we were to mount a
camera on a tripod in a studio and mark a spot when any of you would stand
facing the camera? We would then bring in, one at a time (and without moving
the camera in any way) your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, you
boyfriend, your girlfriend, your postman, your best friend, the teacher you
like, the teacher you don’t like, the sports coach, the principal, etc? Would
you then, after shuffling those photographs (all glossy 8x10s) be able to pin
down who took which one? Of all those photographs which on would be the real
you? Would you say that they all added up to a complete you? Where we to insert
them into a special computer (this was 1970), press a button, would the
resulting one image be a complete you (almost complete as more within your
circle had not photographed you)?
I have always maintained that a portrait is
special for one particular reason. The word in English, portrait comes from the
French which means a likeness in a drawing or painting (much later a
photograph) of a person and especially if it is a head and shoulders likeness.
I believe that French word probably came from the Latin. In Spanish that link
is direct. Retrato (portrait), retratar (to take, make, paint or draw a
portrait) comes from the Latin retractus which means to go back, to take back
or as I see it to peel from a person something of their essence. And by
essence, in Platonic terms what makes one individual not be another.
It is obvious that one’s essence is a most
personal and treasured possession. We rarely lower our guard to show anybody
who we really are. In fact we may not be aware of who we really are so we show
the world who we think we are. A good artist (portraitist) is perhaps at the
very least able to penetrate the smoke and mirrors.
Thus a good portrait is a blend of who we
think we are, what we want the world to know we are and what that portraitist
may understand (or perhaps not) see in us. A portrait, a good one, is a battleground.
As a bit of evidence I have placed here two portraits of former BC Premier Bill Vander Zalm shortly after he resigned in disgrace in 1991. Equity Magazine, a business magazine at the time obtained an exclusive interview with Vander Zalm in which he had stipulated that the article be generally favorable and that the portrait of him be a pleasant one. Shortly after I took the pleasant (colour) photograph I decided to take another in b+w for myself. Which one of these two portraits is the real Vander Zalm?
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| Annie Leibovitz - Alex Waterhouse-Hayward |
Before the advent of photography (and
specifically portrait photography) in the 1840s, there was a big industry of
portrait painters and miniature portrait painters. The latter were not necessarily
short painters but they painted small, almost always oval-shaped likenesses who
many years before Photoshop liquefied, diffuse glowed, healing brush tools,
removed unsightly bags and paunches, etc, idealized would-be partners in a
potential regal matrimony contract.
Except for the very rich who could afford these
pioneer air-brushers photography killed their business. By the 1860s, if you
did not have a business-card-sized carte de visite you were a nobody. It was
equivalent to living in the 21st century and not having a either a
web page (a remnant of the 20th century) or selfies to post in
facebook (notice that the word has to be written in lowercase).
Photography took over and the portrait
photographer became king (an excellent and talented exception being Julia
Margaret Cameron).
In Canada the concept of a
photographic portrait is moribund if not dead. A happy exception is Ottawa photographer Paul Couvrette who photographs Ottawa politicians, Papal
Nuncios and many others working in the political bureaucracy of our capital.
My portraits of people from the past (and
my past) are often seen surrounded by black ribbons in funereal memorials. Sometime
in a very near future those funereal memorials will either feature selfies or
facebook captures of the dead one.
With all that in mind I read with interest,
shock, amazement on how photography has changed to the point that this article
(I have cut it out from my hard copy NY Times and placed inside one of my best
photography books, Photo Historica – Landmarks in Photography- Rare Images From
the Collection of The Royal Photographic Society), text by Pam Roberts) that photography
as a branch of art at the Museum of Modern Art, and other important museums
might just drop the term completely.
At age 71 I do not particularly care in
what direction photography ends up or in its languid process/transition. But I
did note that the article does skip one important branch of photography and
that is the portrait. I believe that the folks at the NY Times and the museums
they write about must next tackle the subject The Next Big Portrait
