What is Portrait Photography?
Portrait photography or portraiture in photography is a photograph of a person or group of people that captures the personality of the subject by using effective lighting, backdrops, and poses. A portrait picture might be artistic, or it might be clinical, as part of a medical study.
Things to consider...
Studio
Location Colour Black and White Tone Light Shadow Angle Framing Story Approach Hair Clothing |
When looking at portrait photography there are various things we need to consider...
These things include what artist we are looking at for influence, how we take the picture, where we take the picture, why we are taking the picture, what do we want the picture to say or show, what lighting we use, how we set the camera and many more things! |
The Selfie...
The Shadow Selfie
A shadow is like a photograph of ourselves, an image made by light (and the absence of it). Photographers are particularly sensitive to effects of light and so have long been interested in their own shadows. Experiment with your own Shadow Selfies, exploring a variety of effects and compositions. The Cubist Selfie
Artists like David Hockney, with his Joiners series, have experimented with the idea of multiple viewpoints to create a combination photographic work of art inspired by Cubism. As well as adding several pictures together, artists have also tried cutting through layers of pictures to reveal others underneath. Experiment with your own Cubist Selfies. Distorted Selfie
Several photographers have enjoyed using their equipment incorrectly to achieve unusual effects. Moving a camera (and subject) during exposure can produce some strange distortions. More recently, people have discovered that playing with the panorama function on a mobile phone can reveal glitches. It is possible to create a PanoSelfie, but much more fun to do it incorrectly. Attempt your own versions. |
The Photobooth Selfie
The first commercially successful photobooth appeared on Broadway in New York in 1925. It provided a way for ordinary people to create a sequence of self-portraits for very little money. One remarkable example of this is the work of Lee Gody, a homeless woman from Chicago, who used photobooths to make creative self-portraits throughout her life. More recently, Japanese artist, Tomoko Sawada, has used the idea of the photobooth to explore her identity, inventing over 400 different visual personas over several weeks. There are a number of mobile apps, like Incredibooth, that reproduce the effect of the automated strip of self-portraits. Experiment with your own photobooth style self-portraits exploring a variety of physical appearance and dress, facial characteristics and expressions. The Obsured Selfie
Associated with the Disguised Selfie, there are several examples of photographic Selfies in which the subject's face is obscured. This effect is a special feature of photography that doesn't feature so much in painting. The camera flattens three dimensional space so that something in the foreground can appear to be on the same level as something else in the background. Of course, some of the obscuring can be done after the fact. Look at these examples and then experiment with making your own Obscured Selfies. |
Manipulation of Portraits...
Fashion and celebrity photography can be criticised for being shallow and throwaway. Rankin is often the subject of such criticism and this project was one way for him to respond to his critics with characteristic wit, allowing his images to be destroyed and the sale of the art works benefiting a music charity for young people. There is a great deal of skill and craft in creating seductive images that stand out from the crowd. One of the challenges of this task is to study the techniques used by photographers like Rankin and employ these to generate memorable portraits. Students must then select the most successful images to destroy. In the process of this destruction they must consider which media, techniques or processes will add the most value to the original image, transforming its meanings. This creative journey has the potential to pose certain questions for students about our relationship to the proliferation of images designed to sell us various products:
- Why is photography such a great medium for advertising?
- How do photographers create striking and memorable images?
- How critical should we be of the hundreds of photographic images we see on a daily basis?
- Does understanding how and why photographs are made help us be more aware of their influence on us?
- What is the relationship between commercial photography (fashion, celebrity, advertising) and art photography?
Photographers...
Guy Bordin
Bruce Monk (dance) Monna Petrova Lambert (movement) Gillian Wearing Herb Ritts Nichols Nixon Anne Geddes Tim Walker Levi Van Veluw (sculpture) Kristyn Vinikour (self portraits) Annie Leibovitz Ian Phillips McLaren Seamus Ryan Hugo Tillman Lisette Model Arnold Newman Helmut Newton Norman Parkinson Irving Penn Navdar Kander Joseph Karsh Richard Renaldi (Takes portraits of strangers) Herb Ritts August Sander Darren Siwes Sarah Small Cindy Sherman Edward Steichan Alfred Steiglitz Thomas Struth Uli Weber Angus McBean |
Nan Goldin
Richard Billingham Tina Barney Harry Callahan Ken Ohara August Sander Robert Mapplethorpe Cindy Sherman Eikoh Hosoe Sally Mann Man Ray Sam HYaskins (Projection) Frederick Sommer (Projection) John Knights (Projection) Diane Arbus Richard Avedon David Bailey Cecil Beaton Jane Bown Rineke Dijkstra Andy Earl Tierney Gearon Nan Goldin Emmet Gowin Mark Guthrie Horst P Horst David Lachapelle Annie Leibovitz Loretta Lux Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe (Impersonates images of celebrities) Robert Mapplethorpe |