The portrait in photography

Helen.clarke@leeds-art.ac.uk

Johann Christian Bach by Gainsborough 1776

● Study painted over time● Image of a personality● Shows status and public

significance● Symbols used

PORTRAIT AS PAINTING

Edgar Alan Poe (1848)

● Daguerrotype: direct positive on silvered copper plate

● Mirror-like surface which needs to be angled in light to view

● Glass cover protects silver surface

● Mirror image● Also confers status and

advertises personality

● “By 1853 it is estimated that in New York City alone there are some 86 portrait galleries, 37 of them on Broadway”

● (Clarke:1997:103)

● Studios known as operating rooms

● Photographers might have 20 operators

● Still for 20-40 seconds● Created a Formal air● Coloured powder fixed

by heat

PORTRAIT AS STEREOTYPE

Julia Margaret Cameron

Sir Jon Herschel 1867 Mary Hillier 1872

STREET PORTRAIT

Paul Strand

● Blind Woman 1916

PORTRAIT OF A NATION

August Sander Citizens of the twentieth century (between 1st and 2nd WW)

● Sander's Face of our Time was published in 1929. It contains a selection of 60 portraits from his series People of the 20th Century. Under the Nazi regime, his work and personal life were greatly constrained. His son Erich, who was a member of the left wing Socialist Workers' Party (SAP), was arrested in 1934 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he died in 1944, shortly before the end of his sentence. Sander's book Face of our Time was seized in 1936 and the photographic plates destroyed. Around 1942, during World War II, he left Cologne and moved to a rural area, allowing him to save most of his negatives. His studio was destroyed in a 1944 bombing raid.

PORTRAIT AS SELF PORTRAIT

Diane Arbus

● A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C. (1966).

● In 1964 Arbus began using a twin-lens reflex Mamiya camera with flash in addition to the Rolleiflex.

● Square format● Flash lighting

“Freaks”

● Portrait in the home● Relationship built over

time

SELF PORTRAIT AS STEREOTYPE

Cindy Sherman Untitled No 122 (1983)

Gillian Wearing Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say (1992-3)

NON PORTRAIT

Caroline Molloy

● A Beautiful Sunset, Sunil Arts Digital studio, Kochi 1 2009 © the artist

Twins

Taylor Wessing Prize

● Bag (detail) by Hendrik Kerstens, 2007 © the artist.Courtesy of Witzenhausen Gallery

Rembrandt (1634)