© Anderson & Low. All rights reserved © 2019 Graham Howe (for Paul Outerbridge)
Currently executive director
of Curatorial Exhibitions at
Curatorial, Phillip Prodger
is a curator, author and art
historian. Face Time: A History
Of The Photographic Portrait
is out now, price £30/$45,
from Thames & Hudson.
thamesandhudson.comABOVE LEFT: Anderson & Low,
‘Untitled (The Mighty One)’, 2009.
From the series Manga Dreams.ABOVE: Paul Outerbridge,
‘Portrait of a Woman’, 1930s.http://www.digitalcameraworld.com FEBRUARY 2022 DIGITAL CAMERA^101that’s authentic and represents your
experience of that other person. It’s
that authenticity of expression that
will really endure.Who would you single out as
a master portrait-taker?
I don’t think any portraitist can make a
great portrait every time. It is about that
personal relationship. I don’t believe
there’s one formula that gets you to the
right result. A great photographer of the
1920s, Emil Otto Hoppé, would engage
with a sitter by reading everything
they’d written, going to their plays,
looking at their fashion, and try to
familiarise himself in advance. He
thought that rapport would result
in great photographs.
Whereas Edward Weston would plonk
the sitter down in front of the lens and
start taking pictures, but the secret was
he didn’t have film in the camera. He
wouldn’t load film until he thought the
sitter was being themselves. These
are just two approaches.Portraits are such a key part of
how we remember and think about
historic figures, like President
Obama and Frida Kahlo, aren’t they?
A great portrait is a double-edged
sword. Sometimes the photographs
that distinguish themselves as iconic
and that endure in public imagination
become a shorthand for understandingthat individual. As great as that photo
might be, it doesn’t necessarily
represent a deeper thinking about
who that individual is. You can’t settle
on one portrait that sums up a life.
Photography is great at producing
multiple versions of an individual.
Through looking at different
representations of a person,
you can triangulate on their axis.Has the #MeToo movement changed
how women are photographed?
I hope so. You only need to go back a
couple of decades in our culture to see
misogyny was rife in portrait culture.
But I’d make no distinction between
a portrait of a man or a woman. If it’s
superficial, if it doesn’t get at their
essence as humans, then it fails us.
In terms of what’s happening now,
I think things are changing for the
better. There are more women
photographers making portraits of
women, which is a great development.How do you think technology,
including phones and selfies,
will impact on portraits?
I don’t think the selfie poses any risk to
the portrait. It will endure, and people
will always make selfies.
One thing that’s happening at the
moment is a blurred line between stills
photography and motion photography.
For example, in fashion, photographerswith high-res video can shoot short
videos, then go back and edit out
frames they can use as individual shots.
It may be that portraiture as a still form
becomes a little antiquated, in the same
way drawing, painting, etching and
engraving are now. There may be
more motion in portraits, admitting
a bit more time into a portrait.
But what I love about photographic
portraiture is that irreconcilable tension
between an individual frozen in time and
your deeper understanding of them:
the idea you can suss out something
important about an individual from a
picture that was taken in a fraction of
a second. That’s really quite magical.