I stumbled upon another inspiring portrait today, this time by Andre du Plessis from sunny South Africa. To me it is a step beyond diptych or split technique, because he managed to take two photographs in one single shot. First, we see a portrait with superb tones:
...and as if this wouldn't be enough, the photo develops into an emotional-environmental portrait on the right side. That's what I mean with taking one shot and getting two. It could be actually three: far left, single portrait; center, emotional; far right, environmental. The little devil inside makes me longing for something to fill in the space on the right, like another figure in the background or some interesting detail of environment, but perfectionism spoils all the fun. Bottomline: terrific concept, for me another lesson learned. I need to ask him next time how he produces such delicate low-keyish tones on his portraits of dark-skinned models - quite challenging!
When it comes to spice up our portraits, it's usually about desperately looking for a new editing method but to my knowledge Andzrej Dragan was the last who discovered one, at least in terms of popularity and imitation, and Ed Carlile is the only one I know who managed to go beyond imitating Dragan. But it stands for photography too that there's nothing new under the sun, and inventing new techniques can sometimes be a mere re-discovery of artistic means used for a thousand years. That's how I found the age-old tool of diptychons, or for the purpose of this post: split portraits.
WikiAnswers makes it sound easy: A diptych is a photograph that uses two different or identical images side by side to form one single artistic statement. The two images can literally be in contact with each other, or separated by a border or frame.
The human body is - in most cases anyway - aligned vertically with the head on top and the rest below. It is often a problem to include the face and, for added information, hands in the frame. Usually we position the face or eyes in the upper golden section. But how to include the hands? If we want to get close to our model, it is challenging to include them, and the question remains how to connect composition-wise the space between hands and face. Avoiding a too low, and therefore sometimes cropped position of the arms is also challenging like it was in this image.
One day I found the two images below on Nicoleta's lovely blog, and seeing them together sparked the idea of putting them into the same frame.
As a result, we have an image that works two ways: we have a portrait above and a documentary image below. The scene could have been put into a single frame, but making it two and including them in a split single frame results in more details due to the closer point of view. In a single frame, we couldn't get close to the subject like this. At this moment, it came to my mind that I'd made a similar experience with two of my own images.
Of course if we compose the split afterwards, it can't be as good as a pre-visualised and accordingly executed concept. The following examples are works from a joint project by Ara Oshagan and Levon Parian (who is a visual artist, not writer). In these images, it becomes obvious how important it is to fine-tune the composition of the two separate shots to make them work as a whole.
The upper part of the image below has a dynamic composition with the head tilted to the left side (creating a downwards "negative" diagonal). It is perfectly balanced out by composing the lower part equally dynamic, with a diagonal from the lower left to the upper right. The hands make the music, so to say, and the direction of the model's limb makes the rest by serving as both background and compositional element to balance out the alignment of the upper part.
The image below is, on the contrary to the first, composed following a vertical line. Both parts follow the same conceptual symmetry: any diverging lines of composition would ruin the impression. The face is slightly out of this vertical, though, but only to the extent of adding a little tension to the vertical composition.
As I said, the two images are part of a photo-essay on survivors of the Armenian Genocide, Ara's joint project with Levon Parian. Check it out by any means, and watch the video in my previous post for a better understanding of what these people went through.
And the variations are endless. Environmental portraits or glam shots (and virtually everything) can be spiced up with this method, just have a look at Carrie Yury's works.
And if we think about all the possibilities offered by diptychs, a triptych could be almost a visual overkill. Sometimes it seems to me that hunting high and low for new editing techniques is all but a one-way street. Going back to the basic techniques of visual arts can be a much more inspiring and therefore rewarding experience.
Imagine that you are of same age with the Land you live on with the Nature that surrounds you with the nurturing, welldoing rays of the Sun that you were born in the arms of Mountains that you grew up protected by a loving Father imagine you had known the real Glory the real Wisdom but most of all Destruction Pain Suffering Humiliation And even Death Forget everything if you can!
(I stumbled upon this video today totally by chance. Of course, the vintage Genocide photographs are not mine, neither is the shot of the girl with the tightly sawn lips. The rest... it's good to know that my photographs inspire others.)
Szarkasztikus cím, de találó... Még valamikor 2000 táján egy, a Fotó-Videóban megjelent cikken felbuzdulva felkerestem Dr. Szentpétery Pétert, egy haláláig aktív, valódi reneszánsz embert. Nem csak arról volt nevezetes, hogy ő volt a 2. világháború utolsó élő magyar haditudósítója, hanem arról is, hogy a háború végén sokakkal ellentétben nem semmisítette meg a negatívjait, hanem nem kevés bátorsággal megőrizte azokat a rendszerváltásig. S mintha ez már nem lett volna épp elég kockázatos az antiidőkben, 56-ot is végigfotózta és azokat a képeket is megőrizte. Találkozásunk során szerény és zárkózott volt, fotózni is csak azzal a feltétellel engedte magát hogy adok neki a képekből. Én viszont súlyos hibát követtem el, mert úgy gondoltam hogy ezzel a megtisztelő feladattal hűséges társamat, a régi Chinon CM7 kamerámat bízom meg. Csakhogy kiderült, a Chinon zárja rosszul működött és egyetlen kép sem sikerült. Annyira szégyelltem magamat hogy még csak nem is szóltam róla Szentpéterynek. Amikor 2005-ben elhunyt, úgy gondoltam hogy ez a vétkes mulasztás már életem végéig kínozni fogja a lelkiismeretemet.
Ma az 1X-en egy érdekes vita volt arról hogy Capát szeretjük és tiszteljük, de nem volt-e a másik oldalon ugyanolyan tehetséges fotós, aki csak azért nem lett hozzá hasonló sztár, mert bár képein a katonák ugyanúgy szenvednek és harcolnak, mint Capa képein, csak éppen a vesztesek egyenruháját viselik? Márpedig Capa és Szentpétery - az "elég közeli" képek bátorságán túl - azért is rokoníthatók, mert képeik az egyéni emberről szólnak a háborúban, nem ideológiáról és propagandáról.
Szerettem volna az 1X-es haveroknak megmutatni pár Szentpétery-fotót, de hosszú keresés után csak 1956-osokat találtam. Azokat is pocsék minőségben, egy 1996-ot idéző freewebes oldalon. Ekkor támadt a gondolatom, hogy felveszem a kapcsolatot a hagyatékát kezelő lányával, mert Szentpétery munkássága a mostaninál többet érdemel. Talán így sikerül, mintegy poszthumusz, lerónom a régi adósságomat? Nosza, írtam egy emailt és felajánlottam, hogy a képeket normálisan beszkennelem, csinálok egy weboldalt korrekt angol fordítással és a többi. Legnagyobb örömömre Szentpétery Márta nem zárkózott el az ötlettől, így remélem hogy a továbbiakat valamikor Pesten megbeszélve vele, hamarosan több száz don-kanyarbeli negatívtekercs várja majd az asztalomon hogy a legjobb képekből méltó emléket állítsak Szentpétery Tibornak és a képein szereplő magyar katonáknak.
Egyébként Szentpétery életét egyszer egy Leica mentette meg azzal, hogy felfogta egy orosz mesterlövész golyóját. (Mit nem adott volna Capa egy ilyen sztoriért...) Velledits Éva fenti fotóján az életmentő Leicával látható.
Apropó Capa... már csak az ő emléktábláját kéne megcsinálni a szülőházára a Városháza utcában, mert ez a projekt is lassan 10 éve húzódik, aztán szerintem rendben is lennék a lelkiismeretemmel.
I started this blog in September 2007 to share my thoughts about photography, as a spin-off the half-abandoned Driftwood Gallery. Hence the title: new photonotes. ("New", because "photonotes" wasn't available as title and URL. I was also considering a catchier title like "Britney Spears naked" or "horny Japanese college girls" but changed my mind in the last minute. My visiting stats suffer ever since.) It turned into a photoblog, but I didn't take (and post) enough pictures for it to become a really good photoblog. Brussels is hardly photogenic during the five winter months, and recently our weekend trips to the countryside also ceased for various reasons. There was nothing to post. For some time I considered abandoning this blog alltogether. Somehow however I feel again like writing and decided to get back to the beginnings: here go my very subjective and fallible notes on photography. I'll write in English to practice the language, and in my mother tongue if something Hungarian-related pops up. Enjoy!
My mind keeps coming back again and again to this powerful photograph. So, today I opened the Bible (meaning Taschen's fabulous "20th Century Photography") to read more about Arnold Newman. It says, "environmental portait" - developed by Newman - is the art of including in the portrait objects characteristic of the portrayed person, thereby associating the subject with his work and with the world of ideas. (I think Newman didn't invent it, he only was the first to turn it into one's particular style. Just to mention Cartier-Bresson who used it as well, even a decade before Newman changed from documentary to portrait photography in the 1940s, and XIXth century portraiture was also environmental in this sense of meaning). It's like pizza actually, you don't need to invent it but you must make it in a way that's both new and outstanding. I tried to get beneath the layers of Newman's photograph, partly trying to understand what Taschen meant by "connecting the subject with the world of ideas". First, it is a fabulous BW shot consisting only of three tones (black, grey, white) which almost gives the impression of an abstract painting. It is the black piano only that bring dynamism into the picture; if Stravinsky wouldn't sit there, we could easily mistake it for a purely geometrical shape. This alone could make it a great artwork, but there's the subject. Stravinsky is looking small compared to the huge black shape of the piano. He looks relaxed and void of any emotion, almost bored. From here on, we have two options. (In Hungarian, we call this útelázgazgolódás.) One is: the portrait gets its power from the contradiction between the seemingly unimportant artist and the huge, dynamic, powerful shape of the piano which symbolizes his music. Hence, the photo is about Stravinsky's music. He's only there to make sure we don't think it's about, let's say, Béla Bartók. The other is: for Stravinsky, his art is more important than himself, telling us that he is a reserved and modest man (could you imagine a portrait showing a small Dali and a huge painting by him? I hardly think so...). Thus, the photo is about Stravinsky. This is what I thought since I posted the photo a few days ago but today I discovered another layer beyond abstract beauty and symbolism. To me, the piano looks like a lion, opening wide his mouth and Stravinsky looks like a lion-tamer in the circus putting his mouth into it - no big gestures needed because he rules the beast. And Stravinsky's music can be like a beast - just listen to this from 6.00 onwards. So, my path of understanding this photograph is: the piano reminds to a lion, the lion stands for ferociousness and power, and it is this association with the beast that leads to recognize the same ferociousness and power in Stravinsky's music. Newman doesn't show the music, he only provides us with a symbol from which we can discover the idea of his music. And that's what I find ingenious - Newman lets us discover this music, the soul of the artist, by following our own imagination and associations. He doesn't show all this directly, like Cartier-Bresson in the famous Giacometti shot (also a masterpiece of environmental portraiture but I prefer Newman's subtlety). In the photograph, Stravinsky's lack of emotions becomes a symbol for mastering the music - not fighting it like Beethoven, not doing playful magic like Mozart, not meditating over it like Bach. He simply rules over it. Of course, it was good that about 20 years ago, on a long train trip from Budapest to Lenti, I read his biography and hence know that he was a reserved guy, not devoid of humour but taking music deadly seriously without making a big fuss about it; he was a star, but didn't consider himself one. I don't have the patience and time anymore to read such biographies but fortunately there are such photographs which tell volumes.
...and as if this wouldn't be enough, the photo develops into an emotional-environmental portrait on the right side.
That's what I mean with taking one shot and getting two. It could be actually three: far left, single portrait; center, emotional; far right, environmental. The little devil inside makes me longing for something to fill in the space on the right, like another figure in the background or some interesting detail of environment, but perfectionism spoils all the fun.
