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Archive for December, 2008

Portrait or Fashion?

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

My work has taken a little turn these days. I’ve been trying to point the camera at people a little more, but not in the flagging down strangers sort of way. It’s a little more planned. I’ll set up a date with somebody and kind of think beforehand the shots that I would like to take. Watch how the light moves throughout the day and find some spots that I think would look nice. So the shot is pretty much decided without the subject there.

There’s one thing that bugs me about this method of photography though. I can’t really decide if I can call these shots true portraits, because the environment has nothing to do with the subject. I try to select a neutral setting like a white wall in order to eliminate unnecessary connotations, but I’m still worried that I might be forcing my perception onto that person, trying to evoke something out of them that isn’t really a part of who they are. “Do this, do that, how about this?” Isn’t this more like fashion instead of portraiture?

So I started thinking: “what separates a portrait from a fashion photo?” At first I thought the objective of fashion is to take attractive images of attractive people, but I don’t think fashion photography is that simple. In the avant garde realm there are plenty of models that wouldn’t be considered “attractive” in the traditional sense. As a matter of fact it isn’t that rare to see photos where the model’s face isn’t even in the shot. Well then maybe the difference is that in portraiture the subject is not directed and in fashion they are. Again, another flawed theory. Even what photo historians consider the OG’s of portrait photography like August Sander or Mike Disfarmer had to have been directing their subjects to some degree.

So then what separates the two? The only answer I can think of is this: the objective of fashion is to sell you something. Even if there is no product in the shot, they are trying to sell you an image. The separation is not in the image but in the intent of it. This line between fashion and portraiture has become really blurred, and continues with the emergence of photographers like Angela Boatwright or Danielle Levitt, who take images of “real people” using studio style lighting. Then there’s the other side of the spectrum with projects like Fashion Magazine, who use the aesthetics of fine-art photographers like Alec Soth or Lise Sarfati to shoot portraitesque images for their fashion shoots.

Whenever I do these shoots I make an effort as to try and not wipe out the subject’s personality with my aesthetic concerns. I direct, but direct in a way as to try and evoke the sitters character, and not what I would like their character to be, but its hard to know when I’ve crossed that line.

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Stella

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Yesterday I went out a little further north of Mojave to help a friend out on a shoot. We were doing some fashion, which isn’t my usual style, but I’ve been interested in it for a while. I always shoot so spontaneous it was a change to approach a shoot with a pretty clear idea of what we were doing.

I just got a 6×9 back for my Mamiya Universal, so I thought it would be a perfect chance to try it out. I bought this back because I like to shoot various formats. Whenever I try and mix my 35mm images with larger formats it would look a little odd, because of the difference in aspect ratio. With this 6×9 though the rectangle is the same proportions, so the two formats should harmonize a little better.

I wanted to try and capture a portrait of Stella, instead of her throwing poses as a model. Its hard because she really knows how to put on her game face when a camera is pointed at her. These were some attempts to capture the seventeen year old beneath the mask.

It seems like yesterday when I was seventeen, but its been a lot longer than that.

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Archive for December, 2008

Portrait or Fashion?

Stella

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