Portrait photography

Don’t take picture OF people, take pictures ABOUT people

Self portrait as a Drowned ManHippolyte Bayard, 1840

The first selfie

✤ Hippolyte Bayard made this portrait to express his feelings about not being acknowledged as an inventor of photography.

Self portrait as a Drowned ManHippolyte Bayard, 1840

✤ He invented his own process that produced direct positive paper prints in the camera and presented the world's first public exhibition of photographs on 24 June 1839

✤ This is known as the first staged photo

August Sanders (17 November 1876 – 20 April 1964)

✤ German portrait and documentary photographer

✤ "The most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century.”

✤ He aims to show a cross-section of society during the Weimar Republic:

✤ The series is divided into seven sections: The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artists, The City, and The Last People

✤ By 1945, Sander's archive included over 40,000 images.

Rule of thirds

✤ Lead room - Send the viewer’s gaze into the frame

Navy Bandsman Graham JacksonEd Clark, 1945✤ Backgrounds - Keep things simple

and clear behind your subject

Rule of thirds

Navy Bandsman Graham JacksonEd Clark, 1945

The Offended WomanRobert Doisneau, 1948

Louisville, KentuckyMargaret Bourke-White, 1937

Sam Abell

Angle and Viewer’s Perception

✤ Using extreme camera angles to manipulate our perception

Cindy Sherman

✤ Looking down on someone = vulnerability, small,

✤ Looking up at someone = invisibility, power, strength

Cindy Sherman

✤ Conceptual self portraits

✤ Assumes multiple roles, uses costumes and props

✤ Often linked to feminism, since her photos call attention to the objectification of women in the media

✤ Untitled Film Stills; Pink Robes; Fairy Tales; Sex Pictures; Clowns;

Untitled #92Cindy Sherman, 1981

Untitled #58Cindy Sherman, 1977-1980

Untitled #21Cindy Sherman, 1977-1980

Untitled #6Cindy Sherman, 1977-1980

Consider your background

✤ A plain background separates your subject from the world and holds them up for inspection

✤ In the American West - Richard Avedon

✤ Small-town portraits of real people

✤ He carried a white background with him, pinned it to building to create a make-shift studio

picture of Richard Alvedon himself

In the American WestRichard Avedon

In the American WestRichard Avedon

In the American WestRichard Avedon

In the American WestRichard Avedon

In the American WestRichard Avedon

In the American WestRichard Avedon

Sam Abell

✤ Worked for National Geographic for 33 years

✤ Currently a writer, teacher, and lecturer on photography

✤ Learned photo from his dad

✤ www.samabell.com

Layering

✤ Relationship between foreground and background Sam Abell

✤ Layering your composition takes your viewer on a journey

✤ Watch for weird things coming out of people’s heads

Sam Abell

Sam Abell

Sam Abell

The Gaze

✤ Consider the power play of gazes between subject, photographer and viewer

✤ Candid photos where the subject isn’t aware of the photographer often feels “truthful”

✤ Posed subjects are very different

✤ Looking out of the frame VS looking at the viewer

Peter Hugo

The Gaze

✤ When the subject looks at “us”, the viewer, we become complicit in the action

Peter Hugo

Peter Hugo

Peter Hugo

The Gaze

✤ When the subject looks away, we feel like voyeurs

Canyon County, California, Joel Sternfield

Sam Mendes and Kate WinsletAnnie Leibovitz

Susan SarandonAnnie Leibovitz

Jodi FosterAnnie Leibovitz

Anne HathawayAnnie Leibovitz

Tom HanksAnnie Leibovitz

Portraits aren’t just faces

✤ Sometimes, there are clues about a person in how they dress and hold themselves

✤ “Don’t let your preconception about portraiture interfere with what your instincts are telling you.”

✤ Great portraits are all in the details - is the environment speaking about the person?

George Sprinkle from the series “Right Wing Along the Rio Grande”Zed Nelson, 2010

willsteacy.com

George Sprinkle from the series “Right Wing Along the Rio Grande”Zed Nelson, 2010

Mike Vitez’s Desk, 11:14PMWill Steacy, 2012

Will Steacy

My Uncle’s HomeDonovan Wylie, 1998

Diane Arbus (1923-1971)

✤ Intimate black-and-white portraits

✤ Marginalized people including the mentally ill, transgendered, and circus performers, nudists, dwarfs, giants

✤ Interested in probing questions of identity

✤ perceived by the general populace as ugly or surreal.

Boy-With-Toy-HandGrendade, NYCDiane Arbus

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus

Jill Greenberg (1967-)

✤ American photographer and Pop artist

✤ Anthropomorphized animals that have been digitally manipulated with painterly effects

✤ How a wide range of expressions and feelings

✤ Distinct, and stylized photography of celebrities including

My Uncle’s HomeDonovan Wylie, 1998

Jill Greenberg

Jill Greenberg