What does the term ‘Portrait’ mean to me?
13:55What does the term ‘Portrait’ mean to me?
I plan to base my portraiture work around fashion photography, producing clean, styled images which do not portray the person themselves, but what I want the viewer to see.
The temptation into reading into someones face, in this case the model, it just isn't possible; the context of which a photograph is placed, defines the identity of the person being photographed. (Bright, S (2011) Art Photography now)
The video titled The Lab: Decoy, a photo session with a twist, for me, really cemented the idea of context and the effect it can have on an image and how we interpret a subject; The portraits I create will say more about myself as a photographer than what it says about the subject, as I will be the one making all the decisions about how I want my subject to be portrayed and altering this accordingly. (Canon Australia (2015) a photo session with a twist)
This poses the question; am I photographing from the position of an insider or an outsider? I will be working as a team and we will all have the same motive: to produce a fashion image which portrays the model in a certain way. In this sense, I am an insider within this. But from an alternative perspective, am I, as the photographer, objectifying my model to the sole purpose which is to flatter my image. And whether the model is objectifying themselves also, in which case I would be an outsider. (Solomon-Godeau, A, (1994) Inside Out.)
The male gaze in film, where we are lead to identify through a male perspective, regardless of our own gender, and gain satisfaction in objectifying women is a key theory for my fashion portraits. (Mulvey, L. (2009) Visual and other pleasures)
However, Alessia Glaviano writes that as women, we in fact do enjoy being the subject of a males gaze, and questions whether the male gaze can be spun into something positive. (McKinley, A. (2016) The Female Gaze in Fashion Photography) I find this take on the male gaze very interesting and plan to look into the female gaze; the rise of a kind of beauty which is less artificial and which praises idea of reassertion of a women's identity.
Bibliography
Bright, S (2011) Art Photography now. Rev Edn. London: Thames and Hudson.
Canon Australia (2015) The Lab: Decoy- A portrait session with a twist: youtube.com
McKinley, A. (2016) The Female Gaze in Fashion Photography.Lens blog online: The New York Times
Mulvey, L. (2009) Visual and other pleasures. 2nd edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
(Solomon-Godeau, A, (1994) Inside Out San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)
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