"Portraiture is performance."
Richard Avedon wrote this piece called Borrowed Dogs in 2002, and it is an essay that begins with a story of his family when he was younger. Richard tells a story about how when he was younger, in every family portrait, his parents wanted to make the family look more "whole" and they decided the best was was by borrowing someones dog, and putting him in the picture as - as though it was their own. He said in one family album he looked through, over only one year, his family was posed with 11 different dogs. The family pictures were there because his parents thought people would think the Avedon family would have dogs, so he should throw that in there.
I really found this essay interesting, the concept of portraits being staged is very obvious, but I have never really thought about how every aspect in a photograph can be completely de-personalized, how each and every detail can be placed there on purpose, and how you can show a person without actually showing a person. I have always tried to let my subjects act themselves, I have staged things in portraiture, you kind of have to, but every bit of it can be changed, and every part of it can be shaped a certain way. Richard Avedon describes that there are really 3 types of results that photographing someone can give you; A. the story is better than the photograph and your results won't necessarily be that good, B. you use the subject outright and might get good results but you won't have any real emotion touching the subject, and nothing connecting him to reality, and C. you can have a collaboration, or a unity, and your subject will be comfortable, trust you, and more importantly, act natural. The last one obviously gets the best results, and while option C is the hardest one to achieve, it comes with an extensive ability on the photographer's part to connect with people, open up, and make themselves trustworthy.
What I got most from this writing are some very interesting ideas, "Photography is a sad art. It's sad but it remains." Richard used to shoot death a lot when he was a younger photographer, although he says it's too close to his heart to comfortably get away with shooting. I feel as though this is a very true statement, that photography is sad although ever-present.
