Timmers wrote:
Classical or traditional portraiture was done to mimic the sculptural structure
of the bust. This was to have the head shown attached to the neck and shoulders.
There was a HUGE shift after the war to render the persona as what could be a persona. That is,
like a fashion image..
This is very true. Richard Avedon was a key figure in this trend: most of the portraits in his
wonderful
In the American West wouldn't be out of place in
Vogue at that time
(though the clothes certainly would!). The cover image has a typically pouty model:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/AvedonInTheAmericanWest.jpgThe same goes for most of Annie Liebovitz's astounding portraits--they are indistinguishable
from fashion photography.
Every portrait is a "take" on the sitter, but there used to be a certain amount of objectivity:
capturing basic physical apperaance. That's totally gone. I have never met Chinese artist
Ai WeiWei, but am willing to bet that his typical expression isn't this:
https://www.metalocus.es/sites/default/files/lead-images/metalocus_ai-weiwei_01_515_0.jpgI like these photographs, but they tell me as more about the photographer than they do
about the sitter, and leave me wondering "how does the sitter look in real life?"
It's always a shock to meet a model you have only seen in photographs---you pass them on the
street sometimes in NYC. Often they look like they have eyes on the sides of their head, like
a rabbit. Of course female high-fashion models are are famous for having prominent, high
cheekbones and being thinner and taller than average. US average women's height 5' 4";
model runway average 5' 10". US average dress size 16; runway model size 0 to 4. Some look
more like boys (even in the photos). What's stylish in glossy magazines can look very odd on
the street.
In nature, critters with eyes on the sides of their head are prey animals. Critters with eyes
close together are predators. Just sayin'.
I admire both portraiture and fashion photography, but want them to be different. Portraiture
can be dramatic without treating the sitter as a lump of wax to be modeled by the photographer
into a "look". And I prefer old-school fashion photography that attempts to make the rags and
bags look good, rather than just portraying a lifestyle (as advertising so often does).
Probably the most influential force in shaping the buying habits, aspirations, beliefs and values
of Americans is advertising. How many ads have you seen or heard in your lifetime, in newspapers,
magazines, billboards, radio and TV? Nearly all of it is pursuasive, not informative. And these
days the pursuasion is very indirect: one rarely sees an add as blunt as "Drink Coca-Cola!" anymore.
The "Pepsi Generation" campaign made that obsolete. Pepsi-Cola is youthful and hip (gee, I thought
it was carbonated sugar water with caffiene and flavorings--just like Coca-Cola).
If advertising had no effect, why would companies keep paying billions of dollars every year to fund it?
Photography, like any art form, can be part of the solution or part of the problem. The old USSR kept
many artist and photographers employed creating propaganda. China and North Korea still do.
Any art that doesn't conform to "Marxist realism" (e.g., Ai WeiWei's is banned).
I don't think photography is helping solve America's problems when it creates portraits that look like
advertising. Making advertising seem more "normal" and socially acceptable is making the problem
that much worse. Commercial propaganda is just as dangerous as government propaganda, perhaps
more so.
During his 45-year run in advertising, the "Marlboro Man" may have killed more people than Stalin.
And it wasn't Hitler who came up with (and heavily marketed) the idea of putting carcinogenic blue
asbestos filters in American cigarettes--it was the Loriland Tobacco Company (for its' "Kent" brand
cigarettes) "the only cigaratette with the Micronite Filter" (Kent's term for blue asbestos).
(In the 1970s American Tobacco bought the brand, and in 2015 it was acquired by R. J. Reynolds
Tobacco Company).
The goal of advertising is to create a fictional world where it would make sense to spend your last
dollar on the product and brand being advertised. The goal of photography should be to say
something about the real world (or a a real person, in the case of portraiture). But some portraiture
is simply propaganda (commercial or political, as the case may be).
The photographer (whoever he was) who made this fine portrait should be ashamed of himself:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2016/11/04/hitler-lead-xlarge_trans++U7XSZWUScsha0PBU9PW8g3CIA-H95ZzdMNYhn0JYf6g.jpgThe real man:
https://pearlsofprofundity.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/adolf-hitler-graphic-1.jpghttps://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/hitler.jpeg?quality=85