Portraiture
Portraiture.
Describe the four key elements that are central to portraiture as outlined in Chapter 4, David Bate, Photography.
Face – personal appearance
Pose – manner and attitude, ‘upbringing’
Clothing – social class, sex, cultural values and fashion
Location – social scene of the person in the picture
Each element affects another in the overall potential for meaning. Passport photographs, for example, usually have plain or simple backgrounds, which serve to foreground the face of the sitter. The picture removes potential social connotations, i.e. any social-geographical-personal context about the sitter. In effect, the use of the four elements and their combined relation in the picture are what organises the rhetoric of a portrait.
The Face.
The expression on a face in portraiture is crucial and can exert a considerable impact on how a portrait signifies meaning. An expression can have a dramatic impact, even with the slightest movement of the eyes or mouth. The mouth is read as smiling, sad, angry, gaping, pout, etc. Eyes can seem ‘alive, ‘glaring’, ‘seductive’, etc. The dress of hair could be a whole chapter in itself. We ‘read’ these components of the head and the face for mood, temperament and character in relation the ethnicity, sex and age, and for their ‘attitude’, including attitude towards the viewer. We can also understand something of the value of the face in photography by considering the close-up in cinema.
Facial expressions signify a repertoire of ‘states’, indicating the potential mood of a person wearing them: anger, sadness, frustration, melancholy, etc. These conventions are articulated across different representational systems, like art, theatre, television, cinema and photography. The ‘face’ as a close-up shot in such practices thus serves several functions: it puts the viewer into an intimate position with the person seen; it shows the commodity and offers a point of psychological identification; and it gives things a
Describe the four key elements that are central to portraiture as outlined in Chapter 4, David Bate, Photography.
Face – personal appearance
Pose – manner and attitude, ‘upbringing’
Clothing – social class, sex, cultural values and fashion
Location – social scene of the person in the picture
Each element affects another in the overall potential for meaning. Passport photographs, for example, usually have plain or simple backgrounds, which serve to foreground the face of the sitter. The picture removes potential social connotations, i.e. any social-geographical-personal context about the sitter. In effect, the use of the four elements and their combined relation in the picture are what organises the rhetoric of a portrait.
The Face.
The expression on a face in portraiture is crucial and can exert a considerable impact on how a portrait signifies meaning. An expression can have a dramatic impact, even with the slightest movement of the eyes or mouth. The mouth is read as smiling, sad, angry, gaping, pout, etc. Eyes can seem ‘alive, ‘glaring’, ‘seductive’, etc. The dress of hair could be a whole chapter in itself. We ‘read’ these components of the head and the face for mood, temperament and character in relation the ethnicity, sex and age, and for their ‘attitude’, including attitude towards the viewer. We can also understand something of the value of the face in photography by considering the close-up in cinema.
Facial expressions signify a repertoire of ‘states’, indicating the potential mood of a person wearing them: anger, sadness, frustration, melancholy, etc. These conventions are articulated across different representational systems, like art, theatre, television, cinema and photography. The ‘face’ as a close-up shot in such practices thus serves several functions: it puts the viewer into an intimate position with the person seen; it shows the commodity and offers a point of psychological identification; and it gives things a