The Portrait

“A Portrait! What could be more simple and more complex. More obvious and more profound?”

- Charles Baudelaire, 1859 

Baudelaire emphasises here how the portrait is a very simple thing: a picture of a face but can be so powerful depending on the techniques used. Throughout this lecture many different portraits are given as examples, from early magazine covers with a basic look, right to the very complex as digital imaging manipulation is introduced, including a dark skinned queen from Tibor Kalman's "what if" series, 1993.

“Once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I constitute myself in the process of “posing”. I instantaneously make another body for myself, I transform myself in advance into an image.”

- Roland Barthes, 1981 

Here Barthes hints at how, even without digital manipulation, taking someones portrait alone changes them as a person as they are often aware their photo is being taken and they begin to pose, stiffening up so that if they are caught in frame, they look candidly flattering even though as Barthes states for himself, they have changed their body for the image and it is no longer an honest portrait.

“ My concerns are not his. We have separate ambitions for the image. His need to plead his case probably goes as deep as mine, but the control is with me.” 

- Richard Avedon 

This idea of where the control is placed is evident in Jemima Stehli's unique portraits in the 1999 series "strip" in which she undresses in front of a male figurehead, until he clicks the remote shutter of her camera, making them believe they are in control just because they are holding the shutter release to take their own portrait but it is at some stage in her undressing that leads the man to click the shutter to take the photo, and stop her stripping.

"strip no 5 dealer" - "strip no 3 critic"

Consider the images above, the assertively sat male on the blue backdrop looks as if he is in control, capturing the shot as Stehli's arm obstructs his face, leaving him anonymous. However on the orange backdrop, the male is uncomfortable at the sight of her underwear, which suggests Stehli is in total control as she causes these men to pass from comfort into enough discomfort at her nakedness to snap the photo and end the session - getting what she wants for the image to develop a series showing a somewhat comedic insight to how men feel when they are being seen watching a woman strip.