Who are all these people?? Photo and portrait today

“A photographic portrait is the portrait of someone who knows he is being photographed. How he uses that knowledge is part of the portrait,” said Richard Avedon. The other main part of the portrait is the intention of the photographer and the realization of that intention.

August Zander. The Artist Gottfried Brockmann , 1924.

Printed by Gunter Zander in 1980. &copy Die Photographische Sammlung/

SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne RAO, New York, 2013

The Cologne-based Galerie Priska Pasquer Cologne

The photographer’s intention and the model’s expectations – the history of the photographic portrait consists of the development of their mutual combinations. Conflict, cooperation, complement, dissonance, compliment, flattery, violence – a huge range of choices. And also, of course, the era’s general notions of the beautiful, the proper, the decent.

The end result is an image of a certain personality. Sometimes claiming depth, at other times content with the surface. A photographic portrait, just like a painting portrait, can show a mask instead of a face or try to reveal an authentic real face that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Unlike the pictorial, however, the photographic portrait may not be interested in the individual person at all.

Photography from its birth was hailed as a scientist’s tool. There is a wonderful tool for documentation, cataloging, archiving. Ethnography, anthropology, medicine, forensics – these are the fields that have amassed huge photographic archives, where each person photographed is not just an individual, but mainly a specimen, a type, a representative.

Here’s a nineteenth-century studio portrait, respectable and standard – a set of templates and clichés, codes and conventions. You can tell by looking at it how people of that era generally viewed themselves, how they wanted to be seen. Here’s the outstanding portraitist Nadar – the era is the same, but the approach is different. Momentum and impression, emotion and movement against the immutability and monolithy of established patterns.

Here is the beginning of the XX century – and August Sander, striving to analyze the character of his contemporaries and compatriots through photographic objectivity. Here’s George Harrell – and the golden age of Hollywood glamour: portraits of gods and goddesses, you have to worship and admire them.

Here is Yusuf Karsh depicting not gods, but heroes – the best representatives of humanity of the mid-20th century, who conquer evil and assert high ideals, each in his field – science, literature, art, politics.

Here is Arnold Newman trying to write a whole novel in one portrait, to show character, complexity, ambiguity of a person, his place in society and his merits before mankind.

Here is Philip Halsman, seeking to penetrate the depths of psychology through play and humor. Here is Richard Avedon, glamorous and grotesque, showing his interest in “paradox, irony and contradiction”.

Here’s David Lachapelle, with whom all the bright personalities turn into beautiful but identical celluloid dolls – and that, oddly enough, also says a lot about our time, self-perception and self-representation.

And then there’s Walker Evans, who back in the 1930s did a simple but at the time unbelievable thing – he filmed subway passengers with a hidden camera, introducing a moment of sheer spontaneity and unintentionality into the portrait genre. Avedon’s definition doesn’t work here. These people don’t know they are being photographed, they have no control over the image. But the photographer has little control over it either, because he doesn’t touch the camera with his hands, doesn’t look through the viewfinder, pretends to be asleep and shoots with a rope through his sleeve. Almost unconscious portraits. Interesting material for a historian. Is it possible that this is a completely objective photograph?

Henri Cartier-Bresson. Coronation of King George VI, May 12, 1937. 1937.

Silver-gelatin printing. Tate Collection, London, donation Eric and Louise Franck London Collection 2013

&copy Henri Cartier Bresson/Magnum Photos

HenriCartier-Bresson. Trafalgar Square, awaiting the coronation procession of King George VI. 1937.

Silver-gelatin printing. Tate Collection, London,

Dar Eric and Louise Franck London Collection 2013

&copy Henri Cartier Bresson/Magnum Photos

MartinaFrank. Greenwich, London. 1977.

The Silver-Gelatin Seal. Tate Collection, London,

gift Eric and Louise Franck London Collection 2013

&copy Martine Franck/Magnum Photos

The modern portrait can choose any of the historical models. To develop it further, to make sense of it on a modern level, to parody it, to argue. In addition to the individual, contemporary photography is increasingly interested in society. It’s also the art itself, artistic traditions and our perception of photography. Portraiture today becomes a complex study of various issues. Sometimes, a project can say it all at once: photography, society, and the reaction of the viewer as he or she looks at the photograph.

Rinecke Dijkstra, Albrecht Tübke, and Charles Frege develop Sander’s analytical approach. Their portraits look as dull as a grocery catalog. The viewer often doesn’t understand why it’s done and why it’s done this way. Large, glossy posters on the gallery wall depict ordinary citizens, photographed as if on a document-no pose, no subject, no obvious authorial position. Who are all these people and why are they here??

In projects like this as in Zander’s what’s important is the very fact of capturing and assembling a collection of individuals united by some common quality. For Tubke, it’s the medium and the timeline. Like people who’ve lived in the same village for decades. In Frege, belonging to a group.

The most obvious evidence of this affiliation is the uniform. Who prefers to wear it and why? Dijkstra’s is a state of transition, of change, of becoming. Children who are growing up, women who have just given birth, etc. p. Factual information, philosophical reflections, sociological conclusions are all extracted directly from the photographs themselves. The more of them, the clearer the picture. Seriality is very important here.

These authors like Sander work with photography as a means of discovering what cannot be seen with the naked eye. Photography is a way of capturing with the eye something extended in time and space, of stepping back into the distance and appreciating the overall view. When we look at a picture of a teenager, all we see is a teenager, nothing interesting.

Looking at a hundred photographs of teenagers from different countries, taken over several years, we clearly see the quintessence of “adolescence,” visually uniting all teenagers of the world. The insecurities, vulnerabilities, awkwardnesses that children don’t yet have, but adults have already learned to hide them. When we look at a picture of a young man just enlisting, we see nothing special.

A photograph of the same young man, taken six months later, is also hardly interesting in itself. But several dozen portraits, taken over several years, arranged in chronological order, clearly show us how much he has changed internally, almost without changing physically.

Everyone knows about the power of photography to reveal the hidden. Photography is a wonderful tool for scientific analysis. The more detached, protocollike and impersonal we are, the closer and more accurately we approach the fact. But in all these portrait projects not only the facts are important, but also human experience, emotions, cultural norms, worldview. The conclusion about all this is deduced from the facts. The immutable capacity of photography to facilitate such conclusions is the main subject with which these artists work. A photograph about society and culture, and besides that, a photograph about photography.

MariaIonova-Gribina. Portrait of Nadia Tolokno

A couple more examples. German author Bettina von Zwelle’s work can be considered a laboratory analysis of photographic portraiture, including all its components: emotions of model and viewer , body language, symbols and what their proper interpretation depends on , control and lack of control of the poser and the photographer , etc. p. Without a special explanation, it’s not very clear what’s actually going on. People wearing the same clothes, photographed against a neutral background, look a little strange, but what the strangeness is, it’s hard to explain. But the meaning of most of the experiments that take place in scientific laboratories is just as unclear without explanation.

Bettina von Zwel photographs people who are not in control of their appearance, who have no idea when they will be photographed, who are completely absorbed by the physical or emotional processes that are going on with them. The shot is taken suddenly – the moment you suddenly wake up, hold your breath, or listen to beautiful music in the dark. The viewer, looking at these portraits without knowing how or what they were made for, still feels empathy. How and why this happens, what mechanisms are involved here? Expression, physiology, anatomy, aesthetics, all come together as a subject. This is quite far from the usual notions of “artistic image,” but it is an interesting exploration of art by means of art. Walker Evans, with his unconscious portraits of subway passengers, has stepped on this path contemporary conceptual photography goes on and on.

The project “Strangers” by the Japanese author Shizuki Yakomizo is also at first glance far from what we would consider a visually beautiful and psychologically profound portrait if we stay within the traditions set in the early and mid-20th century . But if you give yourself the trouble to delve a little deeper, a lot of unexpected things open up.

In various cities around the world, the artist would find a suitable apartment building and send out letters to its tenants, beginning with the words “Dear Stranger!”. A stranger alone at a certain hour had to look out of the window so that he could be seen from the street. Shizuka Yakomizo photographed it.

The portrayed man had never seen the photographer and knew nothing about him, he had only a letter of request which he could ignore or agree to fulfill. The photographer knew nothing about the models-she was only photographing them from the street. No contact, just a shot of a stranger staring into the darkness where another stranger is lurking.

Distance and extreme trust, public and private, anonymity and display, collaboration and control. Transition of one thing to another between the documentary and staged aspects of photography. An exploration of the interaction between the artist and the people around them, between the photograph and the subject. An extremely detached and impersonal – and yet extremely emotional and psychologically impressive project.

Photography as performance, photography as research, photography as a way to pay attention to issues of the body, gender, morality, typical behavior, unconscious reactions, cultural differences and stereotypes. Photography as an exploration of photography itself and its place in culture. Modern portraiture does all of these things, too, and there are many more interesting topics to talk about.

We thank the Multimedia Art Museum New York for providing photos for publication.

Photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Frank are on display at the Multimedia Art Museum New York in the “The Other London” exhibition as part of the 10th International Festival of Photography in New York, Photobiennale 2014.