“What Makes A Great Portrait Photograph?”

Portraiture is not an easy subject genre of photography if you want to portray something more than the everyday here is the person, oh and they are smiling. These photographs become more and more visible with ‘selfies’ and access to high-end camera’s enabling many to photograph themselves, family, friends and encounters with other people. The portrait is not just a matter of showing who someone is but truly looking closer and who they are, being able to feel an emotion, react to the image as a viewer.

In the article, What Makes A Great Portrait Photograph (2015) by Phillip Prodger, Head of Photographs at The National Portrait Gallery, the point of a portrait showing more than the subject as a still life but as something to convey emotions from both sitter and photographer as they dance uncertain of the move each other will make for that final photograph. An example of great portraiture used is of ‘Unknown Woman’ by Oscar Rejlander c.1863, presumed to be his wife.

‘Unknown Woman’ c.1863
Oscar Rejlander

 

This photograph evokes the sense of love between both sitter and photographer leading to the presumption that this woman is to be his wife. The presence of this emotion is unknown in origin as the sensation could be as a result of the compositional aspect, printing tones or focus. There is an aspect to this photograph that is beautiful, yet would not cause just anyone to show this image as there is an obvious connection between the sitter and photographer.

In such great photographs, it is that which cannot be explained which make the great portrait. Seeing under the skin of the sitter is what draws us to the portrait, engages our mind to fully understand who this person is and what is their story, their significance to be photographed. With portraiture, and photographing another being the sense of knowing you are being photographed, inevitably causes subconscious reactions towards ‘posing’ for the camera at which point there becomes a point of wanting to evoke subtle gestures to express the personality which comes with a sense of inauthenticity towards the personality being shown (Barthes, R, 1993, pg 10,11,13). The very idea that the photograph has the ability to represent the identity is ambiguous with a static image in one particular frame when the identity is proven by motion and ideas by the person in the frame, not merely a single image of official validation(Clarke, G, 1992, pg 1). The portrait gives only the trace of the identity (Clarke, G, 1992, pg 3) , for a great portrait photograph, this trace needs to be strong with the implication by Susan Sontag that the direct portrait of a person discloses the soul of the person with a frank expression towards the camera (Clarke, G, 1992, pg 3).

‘It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer … it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary’ David Bailey (2014)

 

Prodger. P, 2015, What Makes A Great Portrait Photograph, [online] [Accessed 20/04/2015] Available from http://photoworks.org.uk/makes-great-portrait-photograph/

Bailey, D, 2014, Bailey’s Stardust, London, National Portrait Gallery Publications

Barthes, R, 1993, Camera Lucida, London, Vintage

Clarke, G, 1992, The Portrait In Photography, London, Reaktion Books

Cecil Beaton

In a series of works, Cecil Beaton has photographed many artists from fine art to photography and carries the honour of having held the first retrospective exhibition of a major photographer at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 1968 (NPG, 2015)
One of his photographs of photographer features Patrick Lichfield holding a Hasselblad, ready for use but looking directly into the camera held by Cecil Beaton (Beaton, C, 2014, pg 274, 275). This photographic portrait is amusing capturing a photographer mid photograph with bemusement and annoyance to being photographed at the moment in time.

Patrick Lichfield
Cecil Beaton
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw65683/Patrick-Lichfield?LinkID=mp60444&search=sas&sText=patrick+lichfield&role=sit&rNo=2

Although photographing many artists, Beaton has not included props that are relevant to the artist, this choice is selective towards how Beaton wishes to portray the sitter. His portrait of David Bailey, the iconic editorial and fashion photographer,  does not use any props to symbolise who he is but to shows who Bailey is as a person, rather than a guy with a camera. (Beaton, C, 2014, pg 260, 261) This photograph is fully focused and cropped to remove any outward distractions but the pose at which Bailey is in is one selected by the sitter as reference to himself and how he wishes to be portrayed within such portrait which is open and easy to look at while the eyes create a focus point to show his personality through his eyes that express a slight humour and content with being photographed that contradicts the loose fist held against his head suggesting the impatience of his personality. The focus on these aspects by Beaton is one to be admired as he is able to convey the feelings, granted the connotation of feelings within the portrait in a crop of the frame to focus upon the features that are most relevant to revealing the identity that remains natural amongst the knowledge of the photograph.

David Bailey
Cecil Beaton
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw67099/David-Bailey?search=sp&OConly=true&sText=david+bailey&rNo=14

His work has the ability to perfectly manage soft tones and the magic of light and shadow to produce technically perfect and beautiful portraits (Beaton, C, 2005 pg 5). The subtle, soft lighting softens the mood and encourages the traces of identity to be more prominent.

 

Beaton, C, 2005, Cecil Beaton: Fotografie, Kempen, te Neus

Beaton, C, Vickers, H, 2014, Cecil Beaton: Portraits and Profiles, London, Frances Lincoln

Garner, P, Mellor, D, 2012, The Essential Cecil Beaton, Munich, Schirmer/Mosel

Aletti, V, 2012, Cecil Beaton:The New York Years, Aperture, vol 207 Summer 2012, pg 11, 12

NPG, 2015, Cecil Beaton, [online] [Accessed 19/02/2015] Available from http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp05064/cecil-beaton?search=sas&sText=cecil+beaton

David Bailey – Celebrity Portraits

Kate Moss, 2013
David Bailey
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/david-baileys-stardust-national-portrait-gallery-review-celebrity-portraits-over-50-years-1436748

David Bailey has become one of the iconic fashion photographers of history, becoming notorious for his work in the swinging sixties, working for Vogue for 15 years using particular models for a long period of time, building a relationship between model and photographer that is also beneficial for he interaction in the photograph. He developed his work to integrate the pop culture into fashion photography, taking new steps as a Cockney heterosexual male in a homosexual world. Bailey started to capture the female model as a the female with legs and breasts, empowering a sense of lust and desire to the figure over the body of working as a high-glamour clothes rack. It could be seen that he also see’s the word differently from his upbringing as a dyslexic who was frowned upon, working as a debt collector, carpet salesman and window dresser.

His work as a portrait photographer is the work that is most intriguing. The square, black and white photographs of celebrities and other well-known people (such as the Kray twins) are works capturing more than just a facet of a personality, the mask is still there but the is a sense of character evoked from each photograph. The series of works began in the 1960’s but continues to this day, building a larger and larger collection of portraits. There is a classic whiteout background in all these portraits with the prominence of photographs focused above the waist. There is interesting crops in the photographs to emphasise different regions and character of the sitter. In contrast to other portrait photographers, Bailey uses a high contrast in the lighting, creating darker shadows on the face of the sitter which is not used often by portrait photographers. The high contrast is bold and yet beautiful, allowing for the possibility that not all of the personality of the sitter is seen. These portraits of celebrities are comical and serious with emphasis upon the person under the skin, taking photographs of immense detail and personality that is wished to be portrayed. Not every photograph is the same but there is a certain atmosphere within the photographs that are familiar in all of Bailey’s work but the particular notion is impossible to pinpoint.

Work has been exhibited globally with many book publications documenting his work while having been published in a variety of magazine publications such as Vogue.

Mick Jagger
David Bailey
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/david-baileys-stardust-national-portrait-gallery-review-celebrity-portraits-over-50-years-1436748

 

 

Bailey, D, 2000, David Bailey: If We Shadows, London, Thames & Hudson

Bailey, D, 2007, David Bailey: Spezial Fotografie, Kempen, teNeues

National Portrait Gallery, 2015, David Bailey [online] [Accessed 23/02/2015] http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp05044/david-bailey

Damtsa, V, (2014). David Bailey’s Stardust at National Portrait Gallery Review: Celebrity Portraits Over 50 Years. [online]  [Accessed 22/02/2015] Available at: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/david-baileys-stardust-national-portrait-gallery-review-celebrity-portraits-over-50-years-1436748

Sooke, A, 2014, Sprinkle stardust on me: EXHIBITION A huge retrospective shows off David Bailey’s gift for turning the celebrity photograph into art, The Daily Telegraph [Online] 5 February 2014 [Accessed 23/02/2015] ProQuest European Newsstand