When I wrote my proposal and came up with sketches for this project, I wanted to explore the interplay between spoken word and image. I wanted my role, as storyteller, to be one filtered through a face and a voice. Ideally, the viewer would have to walk up to the image and press a button to hear a recording of the person pictured’s story. When I was looking for artists, I was looking for photo journalists who focused on telling a person’s story in a unique way (for which I found Damon Winter, a New York Times photographer) and those who were skilled in portrait photography (Richard Avedon).
Damon Winter
Damon Winter was born in New York in December of 1974. He grew up in the Virgin Islands and attended Columbia University for environmental science. He has worked for a number of publications, particularly newspapers, over the past several years. After spending some time on the staff of The Los Angeles Times, Winter joined The New York Times in 2007. Two years later, in 2009, Winter won a Pulitzer prize for his feature photography of sexual assault survivors.
After examining his online portfolio, I was extremely interested in the stories that he told and how he structured his shots to develop a narrative. The setup of his site is traditional in that it shows his portfolio, a brief artist bio, and a list of links. His portfolio is divided into “faces, places, travel, stories 1, stories 2, random”, and “in print”. He is extremely talented, managing to catch a number of interesting and evocative expressions from his subjects. About half of the portraits on his site are close-ups of a face. Some of those have a very direct gaze and some are looking away or off into the distance. Sometimes he adds a lot of interest to the face by overlaying a texture or adding some sort of prop that seems to read into their life or personality (like a cigarette, so many connotations!). He plays with light a lot as well. Some of his portraits have quite a bit of the face obscured by a bright light source, contrasting the wash out with either a piercing gaze or inclusion of some of the surrounding environment (ex. In one portrait, the face was obscured while the body was still discernible).
What interested me the most about Damon Winter’s work, however, was the section on stories. There were three to five subsections under the title of “Stories.” Each number started the progression of a different story. The first story under that subsection was about construction work. Winter is able to communicate the difficulty of the job through a number of powerful shots showing the harder aspects of the job. However, he also humanizes his subjects by including a number of very personal close-ups. He has compiled a beautiful progression of shots highlighting the bony architecture that is being built, the power in the bodies of the workers, beautiful details (either on belts or of bolts), funny expressions, hard, dirty, and tired faces. He tells a story without focusing primarily on faces.
His “Stories” section made me wonder if I should tell a story through a projection and progression of images instead of focusing only on faces and voice. While there is some more focus and direction in my original idea, and it might work very, very well (particularly with a shorter audio clip), a longer progression would mean that I would be able to use more of their story. In fact, if I find any one story particularly poignant, I might expand the project to involve a projection as well.
Richard Avedon.
Born in 1923 in New York, Richard Avedon pursued photography by dropping out of high school and joining the Merchant Marine’s photographic section. After his work with the Marines, he began photographing for a department store where he was discovered by an art director at a prominent magazine. From this point, he did a lot of photography work for a number of prominent magazines, focusing mostly on advertisement prints. According to PBS’ section on master American artists, Avedon was especially attracted to the art of portraiture. Once his foot was in the field, he began to gain a reputation that gave him access to a number of prominent figures.
Richard Avedon is one of the finest portrait photographers of all time. His incredible talent for timing has allowed him to get a number of absolutely stunning close-up portraits and full- length shots. With his portraiture, he often shot his subjects with a bright lighting and a white backdrop. He had a talent for getting his subjects to relax enough for him to catch them at vulnerable moments. He is one of my favorite photographers because of this fact. He managed to bring a number of very well-known figures closer to the viewer, as he caught them in very human and identifiable moments.
Avedon had a lot of power over the perception of the people that he photographed. He chose the photo to represent them in a certain moment. I think that this is one of the biggest things that I have to think about in my own project. Whether hung somewhere obvious or only showed to our class, I have a lot of power over the perception of these people. Looking at Avedon’s work makes me painfully aware of the responsibility that comes with taking a person’s picture. I have some friends that will open up easily, who are used to being in front of a camera and will feel very natural. However, the majority of my friends do not feel comfortable with being in front of a camera. I will need to work really hard to capture photos that work. Avedon was a master at relaxing people and then portraying them in a satisfactory light. There is a lot of trust that goes into a project like this. The people I photograph will be trusting me not to embarrass them in any way. However, I think that sometimes the vulnerability (which I will be going for) is the exact thing that embarrasses people. Some of them know that it will shatter the image that they have, as it is evidence in support of a completely contrary image.
Avedon’s portraits are able to communicate a lot in a single gaze. A steady, direct gaze can communicate power or confidence or resoluteness, depending on the expression of the face. A face leaning into the camera can come across as playful. An unfocused gaze, directed somewhere other than the camera can communicate the utmost sadness, or distractedness, or dreaminess, depending on the expression. To be honest, I have so much to learn from Avedon and his techniques.
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One of the limitations of this project is its personal-ness. When asking a friend if she would sit with me yesterday, she said yes and then asked about the project. Once I told her what I was thinking, she immediately backed out, saying that she would only participate if I was in desperate need of people. So, I may change my idea to a private show for just our class, since many people are extremely self-conscious. If this is the case, I might take two stories and have them projected and looping while the large prints surround it. We will see how many people I can get to participate.
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