Portrait and self-portrait displacement in the photography of the XX and XXI centuries

20/07/2018 Fabio Salun

The relationship between photography and portrait is intense, Walter Benjamim already said that the true victim of photography was not the landscape painting, but the miniature portrait (Benjamin, 2012, p. 93), and, already around 1840, many portrait painters had already dropped their paintbrushes and turned to photographic chemicals, to the discovery of the daguerreotype revolutionized fame and to the dissemination of great personalities as well as the documentation of autonomous people. What I propose in this brief text is to think of some displacements in the portrait and in the photographic self-portrait throughout the XX and XXI centuries.

And in that sense, why not start with Nadar, famous portrait painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth, and the self-portrait that he produced when he was disputing with his brother the patent of the name that gave him fame. Nadar photographed himself completely by recording all the angles of his bust proving, in this way, his identity. If the portrait was one of the great focuses of the photographer, there it did not seek to exalt his personality or to emphasize the characteristics of him, but to prove himself as Nadar, his person and the authorship of his production. Lined up with the idea of “know yourself” proposed by the oracle of Delphi, he stoods in front of the camera and made a 360-degree turn, creating a sequence of photos of his entire head to prove that it was himself, Nadar.

Another kind of interesting displacement in the portrait arises from the human deconstruction characteristic of the postwar period and exploited mainly by surrealist artists such as Hebert Bayer. The photographer produced a self portrait in which he deconstructs his figure in the most typical surrealist model. As a mass of flesh, his arm is cutted off and a slice of his body is taken out of the set. The montage is further emphasized by the photographer’s gaze that looks at the event with surprise, displacing conventional human visuality.

Indeed, the relationship between surrealism and photography was potentially interesting for the portrait and self-portrait, and the relationship between Salvador Dali and the photographer Phillip Halsmann was particularly significant. Halsmann produced many of Dali’s iconic photographs, in his portfolio are the photomontages of the artist flying and so many other images that have spread throughout the world. In the image below, Halsmann produces an interesting portrait “Dali with one eye” where the artist is represented by the assembly and mirroring of one side of his face, which the result is an intriguing image that not only represents the artist but also permeates the whole poetic vision that is found in his works.

As we saw in Bayer, the mounting possibilities are also significant for these displacements in the portrait. Angus McBean, a Welsh photographer and set designer and an enthusiast of surrealism, interacts the human image with the environment by assembling in the laboratory, creating rather unusual photographic portraits that sharpen our curiosity and rethink the problem of reality in the photographic portrait. In “self portrait” his face is placed on a stair step creating an ironic image and rethinking the possibilities and functionalities of the portrait production.

Of course, the use of mirrors and reflections also contributed to the displacement of the portrait and self-portrait in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ilse Bing, a German photographer who entered the university to study physics and eventually ended up  migrating to the course of art history, creates in “self portrait with mirrors” a complex set of mirrors reflecting two different types of portraits: the frontal portrait and the profile. One front and one diagonal mirror allow her to photograph two typical portrait poses in one and only frame.

Finally, in these brief paragraphs I tried to understand how the idea of a displaced photograph has accompanied the production and the images of human perception in the portrait and the self-portrait in the photography of the XX and XXI centuries, rethinking the relation between the self and the other, the photographer and the model and the image and the real, bringing up different ways of dealing with the human image in the photography place.

Fábio Salun

Master in Visual Arts by UDESC

fabio.salun@gmail.com

References:

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BENJAMIN, Walter. Magia e técnica, arte e política: ensaios sobre literatura e história da cultura. Tradução de Sergio Paulo Rouanet. São Paulo: brasiliense, 2012.

DUBOIS, Philippe. O ato fotográfico e outros ensaios. Tradução de Marina Appenzer. Campinas – SP: Papirus, 1993

FLUSSER, Vilém. Filosofia da caixa preta. São Paulo: Hucitec, 1985.

HACKING, Juliet. Tudo sobre fotografia. Tradução de Fabiano Moraes, Fernanda Abreu e Ivo Korytosky. Rio de Janeiro: Sextante, 2012.

KRAUSS, Rosalind. O Fotográfico. Tradução de Anne Marie Davée. São Paulo: Gustave Gili, 2014.

MIBELBECK, Reinhold. Fotografia no Século XX. Tradução de Sandra Oliveira. Lisboa: Atelier da Imagem, 1998.