These pictures come from a series of self portraits I captured circa 1999. I have added them to the Self Portaits gallery at www.wmgphoto.com. Check out Tom’s Wholesale Toy, a new photo added to the Street Photography Gallery, while you are there.
In 1978 I started playing around with the old cameras I had found in a cabinet in my dorm room in college. A friend and I captured this image while walking around Fairfield, Iowa, with my old plastic Ansco Anscoflex twin lens reflex camera, the one with the large dish flash attachment that took real flash bulbs, a box of which I found in the local used junk shop. I really enjoyed that simple camera, but alas, they don’t manufacture film for it anymore – it took 620 roll film. This is how the image (two similar photographs, actually) appears in my picture album from that era.
I am reminded of the Russian-made Holga or the Japanese-made Diana, both of them plastic, 120 format cult cameras. I just saw a new version of the Diana for sale in Urban Outfitters. The Ansco Anscoflex was my answer to the Diana.
here is a photograph of Jack Nicholson on the cover of the March/April 2008 AARP magazine. I am struck by the photographer’s use of depth of field. In the photo, the main part of Nicholson’s face is in focus while his left ear, the top of his head, and his shoulders are out of focus. I looked inside the front cover for the photo credit and discovered it was shot by Sam Jones.
I wanted to see more of Sam Jones’ work so I did a Google search on his name. I don’t know if it is the same Sam Jones (see the reader’s comment below), but I came across the website of a certain Sam Jones and looked at her work. I was struck by the way she does her head shots.
If you log onto Sam Jones’ website by clicking –HERE– and look at the bottom row of photographs, you will see three head shots. The second photo in the row is a color portrait of a woman, and Jones has included her entire head in the photograph. The last two images in the row, on the other hand, are head shots in which the top part of the subject’s head is cut off by the frame.
I have seen other photographers make similar compositions and I generally find such pictures disturbing.
Not to be dogmatic, however, in the photograph I call “Deep Thinker”, reproduced above, the subject’s whole face is not shown. In that instance, it was not possible for me to include the whole face, because “Deep Thinker” is a photograph of a child peering out from the small round window in a concrete castle on a playground, and in any event, I think this photo is successful with the close focus on the subject’s face.
In my view, with a traditional straight-on head shot, a composition I generally find dull in any event, to cut off the top of the subject’s head robs the image of closure.
To see my other portraits, click –HERE–
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Jeff Gatesman comments:
“Interesting dichotomy, using an image you shot with the head cut off at the top to illustrate how you don’t like that form of cropping. You explain why you cropped the child so close when, in fact, I think it is very powerful the way it is, without explanation. The emotion of this photo is all in the eyes and a little in the mouth; there seems to be no reason to include all of his head. The highlights of his face surrounded by the dark edges creates a moody kind of power. There is also a shallow depth of field here that I like.”
You may view Jeff’s photographs by visiting his website www.gatesman.com
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Another reader comments:
“The Sam Jones you’re interested in is at www.samjonespictures.com. He recently released a photo monograph “the here and now”. I am a wilco fan, and he shot and directed the wilco documentary from a few years ago — that’s how I got into his work!“
At an impromptu jam session, someone handed me a sketchpad and invited me to draw. I replied, “I sketch with my camera.”
The resulting image, Pete Plays the Blues, will be exhibited at the Laurel Art Guild’s 39th Annual Open Juried Exhibition at the Montpelier Arts Center in Laurel, Maryland, March 9 through March 30, 2008.
This image was created in camera on 35mm black and white film.
Daniel Oppenheimer, in writing about the photographer, Diane Arbus, states that her “brilliance was to catch everybody unmasked, at the moment of transition between unconscious repose and practiced, social self-representation. People seemed to reveal, in that moment, their essential being . . .”
My objective in making photographic portraits is to do the same thing, although more often than not it happens by chance when I simply am taking someone’s picture. I think I have been successful in capturing my subject in that “moment of transition” in the photograph, Twelve going on thirteen.
I think that such “moment of transition” as it is represented in this photograph is a good metaphor for a budding young woman’s emotional state as she transitions from the state of being a child to the state of being a teenager. I invite you to consider also whether the background in the photograph contributes to that sense of meaning.
Twelve going on thirteen is featured in the Portraits gallery at www.wmgphoto.com
David Oppenheimer’s biography of Diane Arbus is located — Here –