So I mentioned in my last post that I had bought a book of portraits by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Well, it arrived, and I must confess that I couldn’t be happier with it. I spent an extremely enjoyable three quarters of an hour last night drinking it in. It has two introductions, one an insightful piece on HCB and his legacy of portraiture, and one undistinguished piece of waffle, written by a philosopher, which is both difficult to read and unrewarding.
I did come across one particular sentence in the first of these introductions that I thought it interesting to make a quotation of:
“There is nothing new in regarding every portrait as a self-portrait – painters have often said as much, and photography as [Cartier-Bresson] practised it is clearly a very personal view of the world.”
It struck me that much of my work is, in fact, portraiture. My wedding work is primarily a series of individual, candid portraits, mainly of people looking happy and having fun. This struck me a couple of years ago when I was trying to pin down my strengths and weaknesses, and I’m pretty comfortable with it. In my personal work, too, it strikes me that it’s portraits that constitute much of my output, normally of my family and friends. I have never really realised this previously, as it rarely consists of formal, seated portraiture, but informal, candid shots (rarely truly candid; I am given to understand that in a true candid, the subject is not aware of the camera at the time of capture. That is certainly not the case with my family; they’re just so used to it that they ignore it.).
However one likes to pigeonhole it, this style does, in fact, say at least as much about me as it does my subjects. Looking through the Cartier-Bresson book, it struck me that there was not a single smile amongst the hundred or so images. The predominant expression was one of melancholy or wistfulness, or even distraction. Now, I am certain that not every one of these people were wistful, but clearly this is the artist’s expression; his outlook, if you will.
My portraits are invariably of joy and happiness. Admittedly, this is, I like to think, my own outlook on life, so perhaps that fits. But occasionally I capture something else. The above is a portrait of my mum. I won’t tell you much about the circumstances, but I think that it’s one of those rare moments where the subject comes to the fore to a greater extent than the photographer. I think it’s something I’d like to strive for a little more often.