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Portrait versus vanity snap

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Rachel Foster

New member
This thread brought the topic of vanity snaps versus portraits to mind. The original image that sparked this was a self-portrait by Cody White and a comment by Ken Tanaka "But photographic portraiture is about far more than vanity. The best portraits tell their viewers something about the subject." Shooting adults has proven extremely frustrating for me. Some of the best images i have produced were decried by the model because they "made" the model "look old," or her/his nose "look big," or there were "too many wrinkles." Well, it's true that some of these people had many wrinkles, but to my mind, that was part of their beauty.

My question is how one gets these gems of portraits in the face of a strong desire for vanity snaps?
 
Charlotte Thompson

Charlotte Thompson

Well-known member
Rachel

Hey, I read the thread and I adore portrait work as you know-
however I see no problem with either way of shooting portraits "vanity" included
it is very human to always think one should be beautiful and young forver especially in the USA-we are bombarded with it- right?
I find vanity shots to be fun and catching one in their own "light" to be fun as well
it keeps the creative mind open-
I think that beauty is in many many things belonging to this world- mature women certainly are some of the most beautiful and yet today we are still maligned with "we shouldn't have lines mature skin etc.
I personally have no problem with vanity shots but perfer By Far , Natural -

Charlotte-
 
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Mike Shimwell

New member
One of the problems with 'vanity snaps' is that they create a false impression of what is important. True beauty comes from within - always has and always will - and yet when we insist on a purely physical measure of beauty, based on the idea of being young (a temporary condition for all!) we devalue the real beauty that is within and which should grow with age, not diminish. Maybe that is why model snaps appear so vacuous?

Something else I've noticed about my very beautiful friends is that they are generally flawed and scarred from dealing with their livs, but their beauty is revealed by the flaws not by pretending to be flawless.

Now I wish I could capture that in people's pictures with any degree of consistency.

Just a few thoughts.

Mike
 
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Rachel Foster

New member
Charlotte, your points are good and we all like to look good..but Mike cut to the heart of what I am talking about.


I am having difficulty expressing what I mean. I think concern with "looking pretty" gets in the way of good portraiture. If I may be allowed, I'll use two shots of me to illustrate my point. (It's easier to say "Hey, I don't look so hot here" than say that about someone else....!)

This one is the "prettier" of the two....

smallcastphoto.jpg


but this one (in my opinion) is by far the better portrait. (Note: The photographer had no leeway in shooting the first image. It was a cast photo for community theater and had to conform to specific criteria. Given the circumstances, I was quite pleased.)

smallregalia.jpg


In this one, I don't look at all "pretty," but it's far more interesting.

I'm interested in how others see this.
 
fahim mohammed

fahim mohammed

Well-known member
Snaps/portraits etc. for what purpose. depending on the purpose different schools of thought exist and
maybe could be justified. Vanity snaps are a part and parcel of the ethos that says ' supply where there is
a demand '.

Mike's points are valid, instinctively most of us feel them to be true but how can the businesses keep going if truth prevailed?

Rachel your simple question touches on inter-related and very complex issues; of economics, social
behaviours, moral and ethical norms and their acceptance or denail by a society.

Some claim that 'anti-vanity; arguments are put forward by those that are ' losers', those that don't ' have it'. All jobs have requirements, beauty is one such requirement for quite a range of jobs.
True or false?

Our society values the ' look ', one packages a ' product ', it is all about packaging of items for the markets. It is all about selling ice to the eskimos or the sea to the Maldives ( or not ! )

Best.
 
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Rachel Foster

New member
Fahim, I suppose it's in how you define beauty. A plastic, character-free face is not my definition but it is society's. I'm to the point I truly only enjoy shooting children now.
 
Doug Kerr

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
An artist, or artisan, can prepare many kinds of works, to varying criteria, for many different clients.

I think we should not strain our brains looking for paradoxes in this. They can't even be turned in for a free donut.

And I think the notion of the need for justification for generating an oeuvre is misplaced.
 
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Rachel Foster

New member
Doug_Kerr said:
And I think the notion of the need for justification for generating an oeuvre is misplaced.
Click to expand...

Doug, what does this mean? An artist's body of work? I'm missing the point. I think that's far deeper than I was delving. I'm more looking at the pressures to be "pretty" and how that makes it difficult to get good portraiture. Does "pretty" equal "good?" And how does one deal with models who prefer to be pretty at all costs?
 
K

Ken Tanaka

pro member
I can't offer much on this subject beyond what I've already noted elsewhere. I wonder if you might not be stumbling on artificial taxonomic terminology, Rachel? A portrait is a personal representation with an agenda, as your two examples illustrate well. Your theatrical head shot probably had to fit within specific proportions, and feature mostly head, for program repro consistency, eh? (You look a bit like Helen Mirren in that shot. You're a lovely lady!) But that second portrait clearly has a very different purpose, so much that it's very difficult for me to see that it's the same person.

Most portraits, photo and other, are created for, and towards, a purpose. Identification (photo i.d. "portraits"), self-promotion (theatrical head shots), fashion promotion, and, yes, personal vanity. But, once again, it's worth noting that the sitter/subject is generally not the audience.

A parallel, but somewhat related, remark. I have been working with a museum on a Japanese photography history project that encompasses every type of photography throughout Japan's photographic history. Lots of studio portraits as well as landscapes, still lifes, etc. After looking at thousands of images one attribute jumps forward to me. Western photographers have been oriented towards portraying how their subject looks, perhaps owing to photography's early roots in Western journalism. But Japanese photographers seem oriented towards capturing what something is. It's a subtle distinction but one that becomes obvious after a while.

That distinction applies very much to portraiture. The most revered portraits capture what someone is, more than how they look or want to look. Yousuf Karsh's famous portrait of Winston Churchill came about when Karsh pissed Churchill off by insisting he take the stogie out of his face. Churchill became indignant...CLICK! Perfection. Karsh captured a glimpse of the essential persona that made Winston Churchill one of history's great figures.
 
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Rachel Foster

New member
"The essential persona," yes! That's what I want to capture. I'm impatient with the pretty shots. I prefer the essence to the fluff. And with adults that's so very hard to capture because we're all socialized into artificial standards.

These are the portraits worth doing (and I wish I could do them better)!

smmrburden.jpg


smallricky9916.jpg




smmarg.jpg


Even this!

fbprofile.jpg


But often we're restricted from doing these shots. Vanity!
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Ken,

I'm looking forward to having the privilege to see what your are writing on the Japanese photography collections your are studying!

Ken Tanaka said:
Most portraits, photo and other, are created for, and towards, a purpose. Identification (photo i.d. "portraits"), self-promotion (theatrical head shots), fashion promotion, and, yes, personal vanity. But, once again, it's worth noting that the sitter/subject is generally not the audience.
Click to expand...

Of course, having some such mundane purpose might not preclude the image having long term value as a portrait. I personally admire many pictures taken merely for fashion adverts. More often a portrait taken for its own sake should more often than not be worth saving for others to enjoy. However, I'm not sure that turns out to be true. Of course, it depends who the photographer is. If it was of a tradesman or seamstress brought up to Penn's NY studio, good chance it would be exceptional. It might be that workers like Penn in fact photographed the "is" you refer to in your Japanese picture review. But he also photographed the "as".


PENN_i.jpg

Irving Penn: Seamstress​


For example, here, a seamstress is shown being just herself, the "is"; but also simultaneously in the form of "as", showing her as a self-confident person of inherent worth. Without the "as" the "is" might not be approachable to appreciate.

Asher
 
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Rachel Foster

New member
I is confused.


(Sorry, twisted sense of humor here.)


So, Doug, I think you are telling me I'm splitting the proverbial hair and just get on with it without over-thinking it so much? (Plainly said, that is.) That's worth some thought, at that.
 
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Mike Shimwell

New member
The old dead french guy - I've seen his pictures time and again and I still think they are great. Of course forum critique would comment on the poles out of heads, the lampshade emerging from the ear or just failure to place the principle subject in line with the rule of thirds, but I still get a buzz as a consumer of his art.

As Asher said, ,he gave people context and he looked for the momentary in their face.

And to go back to Ken's earlier comments elsewhere, he started by training as a painter...

Mike
 
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Rachel Foster

New member
Doug, split hairs necessitate a visit to one's hairdresser. Good idea.


Mike, I noticed that very thing. If I'd taken the shots, I'd be so wrapped up in what was "wrong" with the shot I'd never see what was "right." That makes me wonder if I shouldn't leave the detailed analysis til later, doing my first evaluations of my shots on a "gut level."
 
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Maris Rusis

Member
It is a cheap trick but a surprisingly effective one: I make at least one "portrait" photograph out of a studio session by flipping the negative in the enlarger. This is the one I show the subject first when it comes to viewing time. Sure, the face is left/right reversed but NO ONE picks this up immediately. And quite often I hear something like "You are the only photographer to show me as I really am". Why?

People don't know what they look like. At best they think they look like the face they see in the bathroom mirror. Only they see this mirror-reversed face. Everybody else, the camera, the film sees the portrait subject's face right way round; a very unfamiliar view for people who are not used to looking at photographs of themselves.
 
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