Portraiture

Application

Portraiture : the creation of any portrait, an artistic representation of a person. (wikipedia)

Famous Portraiture Photographers :

Diane Arbus

Walker Evans

Richard Avedon

Tony Vaccaro

Larry Clark

 A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer. (Wikipedia)

All these photogrpahers have different ways of capturing of their images, but they all come under the same style. Tony Vaccaro is mostly known for his photos that he captured in World War ||. When he wanted to capture a picture instead of capturing it in a way the person in the photograph wanted, he would capture the image in his way, in his opinion of the person. Vaccaro would want to capture the real nature of a person and not a 'staged pose' in a picture that people normally would be told to get in. Vaccaro was asked to do a portrait of Pablo Picasso, and while waiting to take a picture Picasso would do different poses similar to that of other photographers he had previous to Vaccaro. Vaccaro didn't like this so acted as if his camera had broken, Picasso lost this 'mask' that he seemed to have and at that moment Vaccaro captured the real emotion of Picasso.  

Pablo Picasso

 Diane Arbus was a brilliant photographer, she liked her photogaphs to realistic and represent the person for who they were and not what they wanted to be put across as. Her work wasn't very recognized before her death in 1971. Some people said that the world wasn't ready for her style of photography. Arbus was around in the 1960's taking pictures of groups, families and events happening at the time, such as protest. It seemed as if she was capturing the 'ugly truth'. Although her work is now greatly appriceated at the time is was frowned apon and some people could not believe why anyone would want to hire her as a photographer. In 1971 at just the age of 48, due to depression she took her own life with pills and a razor blade. The following year MOMA showed her photography and it soon became one of the most popular exhibitions of the time. Her daughter also helped in the creation of a art book which was the best selling of the time. Arbus' work was questioned, a lot, and has forced us to question the morality of a photograph. What is it we're doing when we take a picture? and what gives us the right? One of Arbus' subjects (Susan Sontag) did a essay on Arbus in 1973 accusing her of nihilism.

Context

Portraiture has always been a very popular type of photography. With nearly every single human being having at least one picture of themselves. The very start of portraiture were paintings of very important people, such as kings and queens or other members of rich/royal families. When the first camera came out this was also used to take portraits of people and these were used in many different ways. Even today, with our modern technology people still pay good money to get their portrait done sometimes this is also availible in old styles. Many Portraiture photos of our time can be seen in lots of different places such as:

• Billboards
• Newspapers
• Peoples homes
• Galleries
• TV
• Internet
• Books

Techniques

There isn't really a technique to Portraiture, as there are so many different styles that you can do it in, from paintings to digital prints. With the old style camera a persons expression could feel more realistic and effective as they would of had to sit there a while to allow the slide to be changed and the photo to be taken, whereas digital camera of today have a almost sudden shutter time so as to capture the image straight away, therefore the person doesn't have to be posing for the picture for too long so the image/expression can seem fake or unreal. Old cameras would of processed there images in a dark room, where the light would be off and you would use different chemicals to get the photo to come out. Digital cameras allow for an instant image, which all you need to do it print.

Photo Journalism

Most of these photos were always shown in a black and white format and very rarely used colour, this gave the photo a very old feel effect instead of a mordern effect as the colour images would give. 

Application 

Photo Journalism originates from the 1930's. A photographer named Henri Cartier - Bresson was the reason that this type of photography excists today. This was possible by the 'decisive moment'. The decisive moment is when a picture is captured at the exact moment that gives that picture meaning. In other words at the exact same time that something happens that will mean something to other people, so if the image was captured one second earlier or one second later then the meaning of the whole photogragh would be different. Cartier - Bresson would wait around for these types of images. He would just sit in one place and wait for the oppurtune moment to come. He always believed that life would happen/come in to the most quiet places, and when it did he would be ready to take the photo, because of this he was considered to be a 'stalker'. This type of photography was possible with the Leica camera.

The first Leica Camera (1925)

                                    

This camera was small. quiet and compact which meant it was easier to use and would be quicker to capture an image. Cartier - Bresson was one of the first people to have one of these cameras. The Lecia camera was made in 1925, and was a big step up from the big camera that took a while to process images. Cartier - Bresson considered himself to be a surrealist. This is the photo that started off the 'decisive moment' that we still use in photography today.

The photograph that started the 'decisive moment'

Context

The images war photographs. They show the war in a up close and personal way. Robert Capa was the most talented war photographer of the second world war. Capa captured the ultimate decisive moment in 1936 when he captured the death of a spanish soilder in the spanish civil war. An advantage to what Capa was doing was that he good pick and choose what wars etc that he could take part of and be the photographer for. When he wasn't out taking pictures of the war he worked for a magazine called Life magazine. While here he was the first ever photographer to be sent out into a war, this was to Ohama beach and he managed to capture 4 rolls of film. Some of these images were to be used in his magazine to give information to the general public, but when his rolls were sent back to the studio to be developed, they were accidently burned and destroyed. This left Capa with 11 frames, and these soon became the most famous war photos of our time. 

This is one of the few pictures that were recovered from the damaged film

At the same time as Capa there was another photographer 'Tony Vaccaro' who also took pride in war photography, but Vaccaro was a soilder photographer so didn't have the luxury of choice when it came to choosing what wars to photograph. He wasn't considered to be a good photographer so not many people paid attention to any of his work. Because Vaccaro was having to work out in the field he didn't have the proper equipment to develop his photograghs so created his own processing equipment outside in a feild. Using trees and buckets. Vaccaro took some amazing photos of the war he was in but all these 'went missing' during the night while he was sleeping, this was because the images contained in the photographs the government believed the normal public would not be ready for.

Capa's life was short lived as he went into war but while there stepped on a land mine. He was still alive but lost a leg and had a big wound in his chest, he was taken to hospital and pronounced dead. He died with his camera in his hand. Vaccaro is still alive today.

Techniques

There are many different techniques involved in taking these types of pictures, but the one's used in the type of photography would be the use of films. Throughout history the way a camera takes and develops pictures has changed. Starting off with cameras such as the Leica camera onto todays mordern digital ones. Older cameras would use slides which with some would take a long time to change over and you could only take a certain amount of pictures for each slide, whereas todays camera you can get a small memory stick that can hold thousands. With the old style of camera when taking photojournalism style photos it would mean that you would have less time to be able to capture moments so that when a war was happening you would miss a lot of it because of having to change the slide over. This meant that a lot of important (could of been) photographs were miss out on.

Intro. to Photography

Ansel Adams

Henri Cartier - Bresson

Robert Capa

 In this unit, I am hoping to learn various techniques using still photography. I like different types of photography including landscape and surreal shots. I am aiming to be a photographer in my future career path.