PART 1 - PROJECT 2 - COURSEWORK

I did a research on Sander's images and selected some portraits (from 1911 until 1945) that have some common characteristics.

Subjects do look toward the camera. With one exception (Jerusalem Pilgrim, 1930), sitters openly show their awareness and acceptance of their portrait.

Even when their shoulders are not facing the camera (i.e. Young Farmers, 1913), they turn their heads and look toward it.

In each image sitter's shoulders are aligned with horizon or another line crossing the composition in the upper third of the picture. There is an exception in the set I selected: Young Soldier, 1945, where shoulders and the corresponding line are in the middle of the image.

Could it mean that Sander's aesthetic sense in portraiture is bound to a composition rule that has the shape of a christian cross? Or is there a deeper meaning?

Props: in each portrait props are not incidental. They confirm the meaning of the subject and enforce the typology.

Should sitters hold the prop, or should the prop be present in the background, they are relevant with what is represented by the subject.

August Sander, Young Farmers in their Sunday Best, Westerwald, 1913, Gruber Collection

August Sander, Anton Raderscheidt, 1927

I find a contradiction in Sander's effort to to portray and typologize each subject: if the subject is an important person, Sander inserts subject's name in the caption (see above, Anton Raderscheidt). If the subject belongs to the working class, or to normal people, Sander does insert just the typology (see below, Bricklayer).

Could it mean that only important people have their own, pesronal, identity in the social environment? Is identity determined only by the name + social status set?

All this sounds odd from a practitioner like Sander, who was supposed to make a kind of "social photography", then document and therefore criticize the social stratification of the society.

August Sander, Bricklayer, 1928

August Sander, Young Soldier, Westerwald, 1945

My personal work

I did a portrait in a theater's backstage. One of the young musicians who will exhibit for their first time, warms up before going in stage. The background is typical of a backstage, where ropes and ladders are employed in order to arrange curtains and lights.

Young Musician before going on stage

When I made this portrait, my aim was to intentionally obtain a silhouette, in order not only to give the right identity to the subject (the young musician with the oboe) but even to create a contrast between the warm-up moment, where the musician is in the shadow (not revealed) and the "revelation" under lights, on stage.

Now that I look again to this portrait, I realize that, if a small part of the stage could be included in the background, the viewer could better understand the moment and the context. This is not an easy task, because I would need a shorter focal lenght and a different point of view.

Nevertheless I am confident that the typology of the sitter is explicit, thanks to the prop and the actual background.

I will have a second chance to be in the theater's backstage next february, then I will try to re-arrange the composition.

Christmas local street markets in Verona have been a good opportunity to create a small collection of types: I chose to portray street vendors.

I had again to push myself out of my comfort zone: to kindly ask to a street vendor, who's busy in Christmas promotion and sale, it is not an easy task. I got several "... no..." and a few "..yes...".

There is a main difference between Sander's portraiture and the way I portraited the street vendors: while Sander would choose where and how place sitters in order to have an influence of the overall meaning of the portrait, I could only profit of the situation and person's willingness to be portraied just where they are.

These situation makes me remember what I read in Grahame Clarkes's "The Portrait in Photography" (Reaktion Books Ltd, London, 1992 ed.), where he states that earliest portrait photographs insisted on their realism, as a mirror of those photographed.

Slipper's vendor

Christmas decoration's vendor

Food vendor

Essences' vendor

Flea market's vendor

I chose to employ my small micro 4/3 camera, with a very large aperture (1.7 or 2.8), in order to avoid flash light and save ambient light. Using short focal lenghts (24-35 mm) I did not blur the background too much and therefore saved the ambient as well.