Selfie – without the self
When I heard that the portrait brief required a self portrait, I was very nervous. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind taking the odd ‘selfie’ but this was a different concept and for some reason, I felt slightly uncomfortable with the idea. I wanted to hide my face in almost every photograph… and that’s when I thought, “is it possible to have a portrait without a face being shown?”
For this image, I thought about portraying the concept of a ‘selfie’. A selfie within a selfie. The fact that you can’t see any of my facial features is deliberate, I wanted the audience to fill in the blanks – to imagine their own facial expression behind the phone. What face do you pull when you’re taking a selfie?
The idea behind this image was inspired by my friend, who, when I tried to take her photograph immediately picked up the closest thing and covered her face with it. I love how the use of transparent objects can be so effective and give the photo so much meaning. To me, this photograph is powerful because although you can’t directly see my face, you can see the blurred outline of my facial features through the piece of bubble wrap – the emotion of my face is up to the audience to decide. It’s open to interpretation and I love that.
“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” – Elliot Erwitt
Brian Ingram
I particularly admire the work of Brian Ingram because his photographs are so deep and meaningful. I can also relate some of them to my own work. Here are a few examples;
I specifically selected these photographs from Ingram’s work because they all represent the idea that I was trying to portray through my own work. The photograph on the left is powerful because you can’t really see any of the subject’s facial features, except for the subjects’ eyes which you can just see through the smoke, this makes the photograph effective because it gives the whole photo a mysterious, edgy feel to it and allows the audience to take it upon themselves to envision what the subject may look like. The middle photograph draws me in, the elements of the photograph all add up to create a “story”; the position of the girls hands, the lighting which hers eyes glow, the make up on her face, the contrast of light and dark etc. It is very effective and thought-provoking.
One thing that I have noticed which commonly occurs throughout Ingram’s work; the eyes are very powerful, I think that they are incredibly intense and they have a glow about them. In my opinion, that’s what makes the photographs so interesting. Below are two more photographs of Ingram’s, in my opinion although the one on the left is still interesting, it is nowhere near as intriguing as the one on the right because I think that the eyes are what stand out the most, in this case, the eyes capture the audience and they tell the story behind the photograph.
Natural Emotions – Laughter
The following images all consist of pure, natural emotions. I decided that I wanted my photographs to have an element of truth so I tried to make the subject laugh whilst taking their photo.
Final Three Images – True Emotions
“In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what’s going on, but it’s representative.” – Annie Leibovitz, 1949
I have chosen the following three images as my final three because I think they all reflect emotion well and each in a different way. For example, with my ‘self’ portrait, I am hiding my face behind the phone because I am not that confident at having my photograph taken (even with a professional camera). However, when I am holding my phone and taking a photo (selfie) using the front camera, I am much more confident because it’s a whole different concept and I feel less exposed. This photograph portrays the way in which I feel comfortable about taking photographs of myself.
I think that from the middle photograph, you can tell that the guy is a stranger because of the half smile on his face.. Perhaps he wasn’t really sure how to pose. Maybe when I approached him I could have given him some directions, but then again, I like this look. I like it because it is showing true emotions and it has a sense of venerability to it, you don’t know how this guy is honestly feeling about having his picture taken. He looks slightly awkward and uncomfortable, but that’s exactly how most people would feel if a random student approached them holding a camera. This is juxtaposed by the third image, which is the image of a friend, because you can tell that she is happy. This is effective because happiness/laughter represents friendship, therefore portraying yet another true emotion.
