great photographic portraits #1



Diane Arbus ~ Puerto Rican woman with beauty mark, 1965

I'm resurrecting this from the recent archives because I lost track of my plan to follow up the painted portraits with photographic ones. What is a good photographic portrait? To me, it's an image that tells us a bit extra about someone, something they wouldn't normally reveal to a chance acquaintance. Like a painter in the days before photography, a good portrait photographer seems to be able to capture that special moment when the defences are down and the mask is pulled aside. It's a definite knack, and there are plenty fine photographers who can't take good portraits. You need a certain temperament, a particular way of relating to people, as well as tencacity and a refusal to be fobbed off with something 'safe' or superficial. It's like being a film director. You can't sit back and let the actors direct themselves, but at the same time you're looking for something that you can't give them.

Compared to some Diane Arbus portraits this one appears fairly conventional, but there's an intensity in the look, matched by the way in which the woman physically presents herself to the world, that borders on the deranged. Like many Arbus subjects she seems to be living on the edge, or very close to it. She is literally wearing a mask - the makeup, lipstick, the Marilyn beauty spot, the hair - but we see through it. Her gaze is confrontational, but there's something vulnerable, human, there too. It's disconcerting, and that's why I like it. Diane Arbus may have seen life as a freak show, but she's never condescending; she respects her subjects. A few photographers who followed in her footsteps - Joel Peter Witkin, for example - seem to me to lack her basic humility. The one thing we don't see in a Diane Arbus portrait is the photographer.