[pure-silver] Re: Fees
- From: "Richard Knoppow" <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 17:34:18 -0700
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lloyd Erlick" <lloyd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2006 9:46 PM
Subject: [pure-silver] Re: Fees
Somewhere Greta Garbo is quoted as saying that she would
never be photographed as herself, only as a character she
was playing. ---Richard Knoppow
April 23, 2006, from Lloyd Erlick,
Very few people have the ability or skill to fully avoid
being photographed 'as themselves'. I have no doubt Garbo
was one of them.
More recently there was the portrait of Nancy and Ronald
Reagan made by Richard Avedon. Two more produced and
controlled countenances could never be found. Nor, frankly,
two more surgically modified ones. But they lived in a world
where everything, even portraiture, can be a contest. Who
could go up against Avedon with an actor's visage? Avedon
simply included their figures down to their affectionately
coupled hands. Aged hands; belied faces.
I think of peoples' desire to hide from the onlooker as the
wearing of a mask. This is hardly a novel notion, but I also
see the mask as very precariously fastened in nearly all
cases. In fact, the mask is more or less flickering; it goes
on and off very, very quickly. This is the main reason I
feel I need a motor-driven camera — to keep up with the
unbelievable speed of human expression. Many people strive
to keep the mask in place, but unless they are well trained,
they cannot sustain it. It is extremely rare to find a
person who can keep the mask consistently in place. Marlon
Brando, Henry Kissinger, people like that could do it.
Except for people on this level, it is always possible to
find a moment now and then to trip the shutter and find the
true visage. Take ten rolls of film, a hundred and twenty
exposures, and with luck two 'real' portraits will result.
That's because the real moments, unmasked, that is, are like
flashes between the masks. The portraitist must not only
recognize them somehow, but get the shutter open at just the
right moment. That's a pretty hard co-ordination to achieve.
It's a bit like hai-alai with light. I never think of it as
'capturing'. People sometimes use the expression 'getting
your ducks in a row' — making a photograph demands getting
your eye, brain, camera, and light in a row.
Out of the hundred or so exposures, maybe ten or twenty will
be saleable. Perhaps they could be termed 'competent'. They
are necessary to give clients something to be tempted by, to
spend money on. As far as my own aims go, I'm only doing it
for the real ones, the ones or twos. The assembled ones or
twos from each session yield one or two out of a hundred,
and if I live long enough there might be a body of work.
regards,
--le
________________________________
Lloyd Erlick Portraits, Toronto.
voice: 416-686-0326
email: portrait@xxxxxxxxxxxx
net: www.heylloyd.com
________________________________
--
Philipe Hallsman published a book called _The Jump Book_.
It was his practice when taking portraits to ask his
subjects to jump, the images are fascinating. He reports
that he photographed Marilyn Monroe jumping. After a couple
of jumps she asked why he was doing it. He told her it was
because when people jumped it revealed their real
personalities, she refused to make any more jumps.
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
=============================================================================================================
To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your
account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,)
and unsubscribe from there.
Other related posts:
