4a 4a oar ea eta Cocca Erion erie Borers ror ny Pe orienta ens nara rere Cortera) Bi corres a Identity Pop artist Andy Warhol once said: If you want to know all about ee aed ee) Ce ee Superficially this seemed to confirm the view of those who saw ena ry 1980s - slick and stylish blocks of colour superimposed onto silk Ce ey See i ted of deeper meanings. Portraits, surely, should represent the real Seana ed image represent the inner world of the person before the camera? ‘Arguably, Warhol's observation is a witty and ironic recognition of the complexities of the representation of identity. The painting or photograph is literally a flat image, ~ a sign with nothing behind it. At ere un ee et Ce eo eet eras least, our identity is precisely signified through images ~ through signs. DO ee oe Cae cee ee What is identity and where is it to be found? What is the relationship of (our) appearance to who we really are? ‘As Oscar Wilde wrote, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, ‘It is only ‘shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true Se Se aePeople and portraits The potency and appeal of the photographic portrait is undeniable One of the greatest gifts of photography thas been to give us the image of people from the past, whether family, friends, Celebrites, or ordinary people, and to vividly trigger memories. Whatever else contributes to our incividual identities, we are the products of our own histories. Portraits, of course, have always been ‘made; but predominantly, the subjects of the painted and drawn portrait were the ‘great and the good. The art of portraiture (with notable exceptions, such as Goya) has also, predominantly, been one of flattery and imagination, Portrait photography is no less susceptibie to flattery and deception ~ and yet. who cannot feel that the photograph comes closer to showing how people really look and thus, we think, vhat they are really like? The writer George Bernard ‘Shaw said: / would wilingly exchange every single painting of Christ for one snapshot The historical conventions of portraiture tended to invest al in the single summative image; but as the photographer Aleksandr Rodchenko noted, the ease and speed of photography makes possible the cumulative portrait: Don’ ty to capture a ‘man in one synthetic portal, but rather in ots of snapshots taken at different times and in diferent circumstances! Although such an accumulation may tell a ‘more coherent story of alt, we stl tend 10 look to the face to see who someone really is. We may no longer see the eyes as ‘windows to the sout, but they are the most expressive feature of the human face, and we look into them in search of the real person behind them, Yet ‘identity’ remains elusive and mysterious. Where, ‘and what, one might ask, is identity? How can we see it, know i, represent it? Title: Che Guevara (at the funeral {or victims ofan explosion in (Cube), 5 March 1960 Photographer Alberto Korda Korda took wo ames of Guevara atiensing a funeral A cropped reproduced and recognizable Images eve Stor o the Marxist revolutionary content om which and good looks have been read ‘onicaly appronviate cau Reading people/reading pictures Most of us are expert semioticians in at least one respect: we are very skiled at reading people and may be very aware of how we may be seen, and judged, by others. We ate alert, for example, to the signifiers of gender, age, ethnicity, class and character, which we interpret through knowledge and prejudice to assess individuals First impressions count fora lt, and most, of us would take the trouble to make the best, or the ‘tight’ impression. What is right’ might be thought of as boing “rue to one’s sel’, or, as conforming to the conventions required by circumstances. We might present ourselves differently toa lover, parent, employer or teacher; at home, at work, or in an interview How we dress, our facial expressions, how we offer urselves to the scrutiny and observation of others are all elements in a performance jesigned to communicate, or perhaps struct an idea of who we are, This self-consciousness can be clearly evident in the presence of a camera, Poin a camera towards @ person and, if aware of it, they will typically respond to its gaze: they may turn away and hide their face, th may respond with a smile, a sil face, oF a pose. Whether welcoming or resistant, i response, above all, to the camera and. itis marked by a consciousness of how the subject may lock in a photograph, | happened on a photograph of Napoleon's youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852, And | realized then, with an amazement | have not been able to lessen since: "| am looking Roland Barthes, philosop eyes that looked at the Emperor”’98 People and portraits What is identity? The notion of individual identity is quite slippery. Where and what is it? Does it derive from your genes, from where you were bom, from your race, class or education, your gender or sexuality? Or from what you look lke? The colour of your skin, the colour of your hair, or eyes, or even the jothes you wear? Of course, itis all these things ~ together with the s lit, your experienc Nevertheless P ory of your circumstances. ventional thinking 0s that whatever our situation, whatever poses we might strike, whatever fashions and styles we may affect, inside ss there is our eal and ‘true’ ide in individual essence which marks us from the cradle to the grave and which the skilled portratist might striv se, capture and represent This is an essentialist notion of identity, which assumes that such an essence efines us and is unchanging. While itis clear that we ere all the products of our nique genetic inheritance which defi certain physical attributes, this doesn't Quite satisty the idea of ‘character’ it "ight be argued that our characteris intrinsic to our nationality, gender, sexuality ass, ethnicity, even faith. But this is roblematic: nationality, for e entirely poltical nation, and interpreta the meanings of gender, sexuality, ass, ethnicity and faith vary widely, Constructes fontity An alternative approach, and one which retlects the ideas discussed in chapter and 3, is the ‘constructivist’ notion of i Just as it was proposed that ‘things’ on have meaning in virtue of their c the way they are seen in rl ion to oth things, how they are used, what they a alled ~ $0, too, it can be argued that identity is not fixed but is relational, Wh we are derives from the circumstance ent, but needn't define us who we appear to be depends upon he we present ourselves and to whom, of environ In short, our identity is an on-going (Ife long) constructive project, and how we ceived depends upon the interactio between our performance and the may of the conventions of signifiers of ident and the skills with which they are read ‘Te: Tattooed Photographer Kenneth Benjamin Ri100 Signifying identity approaches to signify the identities of ir subjects. Broadly these are either ‘environmental’ portraits - where the ubject is presented within a real space and context, which might signily their tastes, activities or circumstance tudio portraits, where be accompanied by pro eu isolated gainst ground. Aditionally photog will use a range of devices D relax, animate ract the subject in surptise or ral appearanc Typically, a por con: ind willing) par the subject; but it might b ‘a more authenti is constructed with the ation of argued that the subject unawares, or unguarded, thus voiding the self-conscious or instinctive sing for the camera, and preventing he subject from manipulating their owr opr rance for the purpo n image, Thi of projecting street photography wher unnoticed by ay disguise ity falker Evans used a hidden Paul Strar cameras with false vitt used s. thus fooling inking that they hing the photographer at 'e paparazai's brazen rity offstage rem unpre the teal pers on behind the mask But ll of this presup something that and represented and, mor this can be achieved in a s ntinually¢ that presents different f contexts, the si convey this ct oWving 2s in cifferent photograph smplexity. At best, th otographer must m in order to construct a r ge the spresentatior of identity particular ide “ile: Presents (three Asmat men, tee T-shirts, three presents), 1994 Photographer: Roy Vilevoyekes its cues from the history of portal painting in which the background woul be contrived to either provide context, oF y lend a formal digni image of the sitet. Visitors snhance the raphy sorttail studio would typically dress in their iday best and be formally posed agai a backd up props, The limited and impersonal nature of these studios inevitably gives rise to a +héd and formulaic result n his portalt studio in Mali, Seydou Keita’s subject: ould come not only dressed up in often ularly patterned materials, but the heir own props (a radio, a bicycle, a scooter), thus asserting their ted by an array of would also bri own sense of their identity in the pict he neutral background can be seen in its most stark and dramatic form in th ) of whom applied their method: siclures of ordinary people, celebrities and ashion models Avedon's ‘studio" for the portraits Inthe ickdrop against which his subjects, ordinary working men and women, would pose. The effect of the backdrop is to isolate hem from the distractions of their everyday vironment and focus all attention onto 1 textures of their clothes, faces anc bodies in which we read their ‘character This i npts us to believe we see 1e essence of the subject's identity, but ontext, the su uuthentic and exotic. This later quality is, dentin lving Penn's portraits as New of non-West Guinea tribesmen and Moroc in which the contrast between the coo! histication of the method and the ritual: pased costume is staring and disturbing sme time, the effect is to ‘make strange’ is are made to seem both Title: Taliban portal, Kandahar, [Afghanistan, 2002, Photographer: © T. Dworzak ‘pone and ports | Stanitying identity | ookSignifying Identity Photographer: Stove McCurry McCurry specials in tect Environmental portraits (One of the mast ambitious portrait documentary projects was Augus People of the 20th Century, begun in 1911 ‘and continued with interruptions until the Sander set out sument examples of all the social types living and working n the Germany of his time. His approach ighly formal ~ most subjects are stiffly .0sed, unsmiling, square to the camera h their occupation or status signified by heir clothes and surroundings, The pictur constitute a fascinating historic document social typ: rom the subjects” physical appeara surroundings a great deal of information, but although we can read le anonymous types rather than expressive individuals. Diane Arbus’ portraits the 1960s bear a superficial resemblance New Yorkers in ‘Sanders’ work. Her subjects alsc ippear, face-on, in full consc the camera's gaze; but wh sis sness of Sender's, nate and systematic approach es a range of stereotypes (peasant, hhemian, middle class) Arbus fo n very pa pes. Her subjects are istinctive in thelr oddness, that is, they 1 fit into conventional stereotypes, The rank stare of her camera se: ubjects as vulnerable outsider. he piclures have remained enduringly I: some see them as profoundly mpathetic, celebrating a social diversity hal conventional sociely all too readily id ontiove marginalizes, while others see Arbus as a rue! exploiter of her subjects’ innocence ‘The subjective portrait The emphi objectivity ~ all our at subjects and th while we can recognize of the project and deploying a consi ‘method, his pictures tel us ite abou Arbus's pictures, on the other hand, highly subjective: we get a clear insig her interests and way of s sanders’ project i information st Rineke Dijkstra, an admirer of Arbus) interested in making portraits of peo fates of transition, Her Beach portial adolescents in bathing costumes wil inthe background. hildhood and adulthoot lust their costumes, her subjects be a touching awkwardne: uthentic. More extreme are he ‘mother with child, minutes after gi birth, and blood-spattered builtighter fresh from their fights. in each case, subjects are in such an exhausted i ‘emotionally excited state that they lo self-co allow what Dijkstra calls a ‘natural’ py Lught betw s before the camerLooking king and being Looks and gazes looked at has been long understood: ws are told in Genesis, that when Adam and Eve ate the tuit of the Tee of Knowledge, Daniel Chandler, in Notes on ‘The Gaze’ has helpfull Iisted the various gazes that can be Identified in elation to a photograph. In brief 7 fore oe _ the gaze of the viewer at an image of a Whatever else one might say about Us. This gaze might be m distaste; we might fe and ‘naked! f how we imagine si plesaiee.or out of the frame’ as if at the viewer, with dmired or pert associated gestures and postures: We become consciot the look of the camera: the way thatthe appear tothe oth amera itself appears to look at the pethaps, adjust our faces and bodies to. people depicted and, by association, the snhance the signification of an identity that gaze of the photographer we hope will be read by the other; the othe in tur, is the object of and Throughout the ages the power of images interpretation. Within this simple interaction has been understood: a face look atu looks there can b from a statue, painting or a photograph A look can challenge, invite or possess complex mix of pleasure and discomfort, desire and power c and we imagine we feel their gaze. The That complexity is increased when one iconoclastic destruction of statues and nsiders a photograph: the viewer of a pictures, of the graffi assault on photograph may look at a face that seems photograph, can seem like a physical to look back at us, but which in fact was sault on the person: the blacking out looking at the camera or the photograph eyes to protect identity seems like igh we know this, we may stil be an act of blinding. On the other han« Title: Watching me, watching you, 2012, seduced into believing thal the petson in the picture is smiling with pleasure at 1 fallin love with the person we Imagine to be smiling seductively at us.108 Looking The gendered gaze Sex, gender and sexually are clearly fundamental elements of individual identity, Sex refers to the biological characteristics of male and female bodies, gender refers to the cultural differences that are assumed to follow from those biological diferer to the orientation es; and sexuality refers sexual desir white alist sexuality would take anes jew of gender and hem to be fixed , which are predetermined nd naturally follow the given biological identity, the constructivist view would be hat these characteristics are shaped by vironn lure and experience. As French philosopher, Simons wrote, of female perience but rather becomes a woman’. A significant all lean that is learn to conform to the that define gendered b: and appearance in any glven cultur hrough visual represent as John Berger (Wé and Laura Mulvey (V Narrativ na, 1973) have drawn upon ssychoanalytical theories of the gaz gue that a poltic visual representations of men a pans by which Ws come me conventic haviou ions, Writers such ‘eeing, 1972) of gender underpins Berge ong established ting argues that th dition of men as self-sufficient and powerful Individuals and women as objects of visual pleasure (principally for men) is so firmly established that the power relationship which it presents appears ‘natural ‘and normal, and that appearance is continually reinforced through repetition In Ways of Seeing, Berge relationship as fo umm: them: 3. This determines relation of wornen | herself is male: the surveyed female je potent in relation to the body. Title: Woman atthe races, 201WwW Tne Beay’ ll inhabit ources of pleasure and pain, desir and disgust, pride and anxi Allcultures have been preoccus h ways of thinking about and looking at the ty. Pethaps, there is ‘of human cial lfe that is more profoundly an omplexly -gulated? From the moment 1d declared male or jucture to dres a baby is born female, that body is subje social conventions about have, think and be regarded. To put his in the language of cultutal theory, the et of rules and practices that effectively define ‘reality: To a significant extent, the node ss and present the ie body can be readily understood fich and complex semiotic text. We idly read and interpret the bodies of 1ase we directly encounter as well as }o8e in media representations. Ws siderable effort i dy management in order to both define ourselves and to signal ur identities to others: indeed such How the body is represented and fo what purpose is a rich source of debate about identity, economics and poll 2s Barbara Kiuger's 1989 pholomontage John Berger (b. 1926) British writer and critic, Berger's ‘groundbreaking BBC television series and ook, Ways of Seeing (1972) drew, in part, explicitly on the ideas of Walter Benjamin's. essay ‘The Work of Artin the Age of ‘Mechanical Reproduction”. Ways of Seeing has been hugely influential in making accessible some challenging ideas about the gaze (see pages 108 and 108), feminist analysis of representations of the body, and the role of images in advertising,The Ideal bodyarn ‘The real body Jodl Baber. In response tothe Dov Tat there they be & G58 CORE mmpeign made her own sels of portal ition of Weal odes routiety plired led ‘Real Beauty. Working n collaboration al curve inthe med and the shape of aeua wath genuinely ordinary women In Sout 1 re bodies of onary people sno surprise, Aa, she photographed them n their tite pevcrakeselttsuntaneeee Thies posi aa el chose. ha Auer caused has become incieasingy a matter ut: he work deals with really. the fete tise lane tat eect shoot created a apace i which sac es beets dimers me coldt cetera hatone Kieth of images to affect individuals and the relation to beauty, and live for a couple ave ees Of hours n an envronment of fniasy It would seem tobe sel-ovdent that Jverisements and propaganda have the owe io alec people's behaviour thoughts ind actions ~ and semiotic analysis is one method of revealing how particular images peak’ to us. However, it does not follow that people ate typically mindless, unetitically absorbing and acting upon the messages delivered by the media. As the interpretative nodel of semiotics suggests, in pra Photographer: Nicholas Balley we are generally active negotiators of teresa ig Noverthooss, tis also clear that some ecm elena i vulnerable to manipulation than others caine ARES links have been suggested, for example, Se and the occurrence of eating disorders. The ‘to ctereotys ae of representation of particular ethnic ind body types can also appear as a form prejudiced discrimination with consequent Jamage to individuals’ self-esteem. ‘Titie: Stomach, 2012 Photographer: Nicola Foray The evident disconnection between the ideal body, typically represented in advertising, id the ‘real’ bodies of consumers was ‘annily exploited by cosmetics company Dove in their ‘Campaign for Real Beauty Launched in 2004, the advertisements, photographed by Rankin, featured a range f differently sized ‘ordinary’ women pictured .gainst a blank studio background Looking |The hedy | Case study: Mare Garangot116 The body Fantasy and fashion protect 7 Se in ite; fa