Jason Kittelberger Photography Blog

Kevin Spacey or just a rose…

Lately I’ve been thinking about portraits. It’s something I do a lot, but it’s not often I try to actually express those thoughts anywhere but inside my own head. But now that I’ve got this blog thing going, I figure I might as well write those thoughts down on the figurative bathroom wall.

It’s funny, because I guess everyone has their own idea of what they think a good portrait should be. Ask most parents and to them a good portrait is picture that portrays their child in a flattering way and shows them smiling and happy. Ask a model and they’ll say a good portrait is one that makes them look both beautiful and sexy. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I think every parent wants to see their child smile and every model wants to be seen in a flattering light.

But ask most portrait photographers what makes a good portrait, and I think the answer you’ll get is entirely different. I think most photographers would define a good portrait as one that reveals something about the subject. But what are they really trying to reveal. From my point of view, when I look at the work of photographers who make this claim, their portraits are not so much about revealing character, as they are about forcing the subject to be viewed a certain way. It’s like somehow these photographers strive to force some predefined emotion on the viewer. And that forced emotion is somehow idealized as revealing something important about the subject. And somehow that forced emotion shows character.

As far as I’ve concerned that’s bull. If everyone looks at a picture and sees the exact same thing and feels the exact same way, what exactly is being revealed? What is there to really see? After all, if everybody sees it how revealing can it be?

With my portraits, the most common criticism I hear is that my pictures are cold and emotionless. And I suppose they are when compared to what most people expect a portrait to be. And that’s fine if that is what you see. I really don’t expect to please anyone except myself. I’m happy if I do, but I don’t mind the criticism if I don’t. In some ways I even see that criticism as a badge of honor.

But I like to think if you look at one of my photographs and find it cold and emotionless, either you’re not looking hard enough, or you’re expecting to see something that isn’t there. And I guess that’s sort of the point. I don’t want to tell the viewer what to think, or how they should see the subject. When it comes down to it, I could easily manipulate the subject and manufacture any emotion I wanted. But that kind of emotion is easy. It’s sentimental and doesn’t reveal anything. It’s a campaign slogan or a Victoria’s Secret ad.

With my portraits, I don’t want you to tell you what to see. I want you to look, and look deep, to see what you see. Not what I see, or what your wife sees, or even what the subject wants you to see. I want you to see what you alone see, and hopefully that is something that is personal and unique and complex. Just like the actual person in the picture is seen by a thousand different people in a thousand different ways, a portrait should be similarly complex, and not be about a single emotion or a single idea.

I want my portraits to be mysterious and ambiguous, and also to be rich and complex, yet apparently simple at the same time. I want to strip away the pretense and present a person as they really are. Not as how you think they should be, or how I think they should be, or even how they see themselves. I want to present them simply and plainly, open for everybody to see, in their own unique way. And I don’t think you can do that by forcing your own perception on the viewer.

So when I hear someone say my portraits are cold or emotionless, I say thank you. And then I say look again but try harder this time, and don’t look for what you expect to see, but look for what you can see. Look at the photograph and view it for what is, not what someone tells you it should be. You have to look closer and let the subject reveal itself, and know that what’s revealed, won’t be what’s be on the surface.

To be honest, I have no earthly idea if that is what I achieve with my portraits. I guess that’s better left for others to judge. All I know is that it’s what I try to achieve, and I do hope in some small way that I approach that ideal.

I think that’s why I admire photographers like Mapplethorpe and Avedon and Greenfield-Sanders, because I think they aspire to that ideal, and are largely successful in that pursuit. When I see a Mapplethorpe portrait or a picture from Avedon’s In The American West, or one of Greenfield-Sanders’ portraits of New York City artists, I instinctively want to look deeper. I’m drawn in and I think about the person I’m seeing, and I wonder about who they really are and what they really think. I wonder about how they feel and where they came from and where they’re going. I think about all of those things, and in the end, I draw my own conclusions and I see that person in the photograph in my own unique way. And to me that ambiguity and that mystery is so much more revealing than a dour grin or sexy pout could ever be. And that is what I think a portrait should really be.

Caulfield ain’t got noting on this guy…

If you don’t know what you’re doing you can always call it art…

Promising new site at http://creativeimagemaker.co.uk focusing on traditional photography. It will be interesting to see where it goes. For now check out the excellent article detailing the platinum/palladium printing process.

Quite beautiful I think, and certainly a lot more beautiful than plenty of other things in Texas…

Don’t shoot in the dark…

Genius was or genius is?

Below is a quote from a post by Svend Videbak on APUG. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Irony not included…

From the pages of Advanced Photoshop, the magazine for Adobe Photoshop professionals, their section called “peer pressure — our pick of the best reader submissions sent to us this month.”

The winner’s quotation: “I would say my style is surreal/fantasy-based with a touch of sci-fi here and there. I absolutely adore the work of M C Escher and Salvador Dali. Who knows what they would have been capable of creating, should they have had Photoshop at their disposal.”

Unfortunately, the execrable winning picture does not allow for any irony in the above.

But alas, no fiddler…