Portrait photography has a long and varied history that dates back to 1839. Portrait photography became popular through early images of famous people and evolved as a way to preserve history. A portrait is a photograph of a person taken by another person, while a self-portrait is a picture one takes of themselves.

The invention of photography can be credited to Louis Daguerre, who first introduced the concept to the French Academy of Sciences in 1839. That same year, Robert Cornelius produced what’s considered the first photographic self-portrait.

Portrait studios started springing up the next year. These early studios weren’t an instant hit, as a majority of the public was still unsure of the new medium.

To dissuade their fears, photographers sought to capture images of famous people, such as Abraham Lincoln and Charles Dickens. Portrait photography became a way for people to have an image of a loved one or a celebrity without having to commission an artist to paint a time-consuming portrait.

PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHERS THROUGHOUT HISTORY

ROBERT CORNELIUS

(March 1, 1809 – August 10, 1893)

Robert Cornelius was an American photographer and pioneer in the history of photography. He designed the photographic plate for the first photograph taken in the United States, an image of Central High School taken by Joseph Saxton in 1839. His self image taken in 1839 is the first known photographic portrait of a human taken in the United States. He operated two of the earliest photography studios in the United States between 1841 and 1843 and implemented innovative techniques to significantly reduce the exposure time required for portraits.

HENRY MULLINS

 (1818-1880)

Henry Mullins is one of the most prolific photographers represented in the Societe Jersiase Photo-Archive, producing over 9,000 portraits of islanders from 1852 to 1873 at a time when the population was around 55.000. The record we have of his work comes through his albums, in which he placed his clients in a social hierarchy. The arrangement of Mullins’ portraits of ‘who’s who’ in 19th century Jersey are highly politicised.

Henry Mullins started working at 230 Regent Street in London in the 1840s and moved to Jersey in July 1848, setting up a studio known as the Royal Saloon, at 7 Royal Square. Here he would photograph Jersey political elite (The Bailiff, Lt Governor, Jurats, Deputies etc), mercantile families (Robin, Janvrin, Hemery, Nicolle ect.) military officers and professional classes (advocates, bankers, clergy, doctors etc).

His portrait were printed on a carte de visite as a small albumen print, (the first commercial photographic print produced using egg whites to bind the photographic chemicals to the paper) which was a thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. The size of a carte de visite is 54.0 × 89 mm normally mounted on a card sized 64 × 100 mm. In Mullins case he mounted his carted de visite into an album. Because of the small size and relatively affordable reproducibility cartes de visite were commonly traded among friends and visitors in the 1860s. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors. The immense popularity of these card photographs led to the publication and collection of photographs of prominent persons. He also arranged single portraits into diamond cameos.

Some headshots by Mullins of both Jersey men and women were produced as vignette portrait which was a common technique used in mid to late 19th century.

JULIA MARGARET CAMERON

(11 June 1815-26 January 1879)

Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer who is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. She is known for her soft-focus close-ups of famous Victorian men and for illustrative images depicting characters from mythology, Christianity, and literature

Cameron was often criticized by the photographic establishment of her day for her supposedly poor technique: some of her pictures are out of focus, her plates are sometimes cracked, and her fingerprints are often visible, however Cameron was an amateur- the camera she used being a gift from her son-in-law.

Having lived in India and London, Cameron’s family had recently moved to the Isle of Wight, a popular location for Britain’s cultural elite—residents included essayist, philosopher, and historian Thomas Carlyle, author Charles Dickens, inventor John Herschel, and poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. Cameron photographed these famous tenants and anyone else who would let her. Such local figures as the postman, as well as her own family and servants, appear in many of her images.

Her tenacity and eccentricity eventually became well known; she allegedly followed promising-looking people on the streets until they consented to model for her. A well-read, educated woman, she often pressed her subjects into posing for pastoral, allegorical, historical, literary, and biblical scenes, such as in Madonna with Children (1864). In this photograph, she transforms Mary Kellaway, a local dressmaker, and Elizabeth and Percy Keown, children of a gunner in the Royal Army, into figures in an enduring art historical scene.

AUGUST SANDER

(November 17, 1876 -April 20, 1964)

August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer. Sander’s first book Face of our Time was published in 1929. Sander has been described as “the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century”.

His photos are similar to modern street photography, capturing people in their natural environment .

August Sander was a German photographer whose work documented the society he lived in. Lauded as one the most-important portrait photographers of the early 20th century, Sander focused his gaze on bricklayers, farmers, bakers, and other members of the community. “Nothing seemed to me more appropriate than to project an image of our time with absolute fidelity to nature by means of photography,” he once declared. “Let me speak the truth in all honesty about our age and the people of our age.”

Born in Herdorf, Germany on November 17, 1876, Sanders learned photography during his military service in the city of Trier. By 1910, he had moved to a suburb of Cologne, spending his days biking along the roads to find people to photograph. By the time the Nazi regime rose to power in the 1930s, Sander was considered an authority on photography and recognized for his book Face of Our Time (1929).

During this era, he faced both personal persecution and the systematic destruction of his work. Following the death of his son in 1944, and the destruction of his work in 1946, Sander practically ceased photography altogether. He died in Cologne, Germany on April 20, 1964 at the age of 87. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, among others.

THOMAS RUFF

(February 10, 1958-)

Thomas Ruff  portrays works that examine complex relationship between photography, political propaganda, and the possibilities of digital manipulation.

Born in 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach, Germany, Thomas Ruff attended the Staatlichen Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf from 1977 to 1985. Ruff rose to international prominence in the late 1980s as a member of the Düsseldorf School, a group of young photographers who had studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher and became known for their experimental approach to the medium and its evolving technological capabilities.

Ruff in particular made a radical break with the style of his teachers, establishing a distinct approach to conceptual photography through a variety of strategies, including the use of color, the purposeful manipulation of source imagery—originally through manual retouching techniques and eventually through digital methods—and the enlargement of the photographic print to the scale of monumental painting.

Working in discrete series, Ruff has since utilized these methods to conduct an in-depth examination of a variety of photographic genres, including portraiture, the nude, landscape, and architectural photography, among others. Highly influential to subsequent generations of photographers, Ruff’s overarching inquiry into the “grammar of photography” accounts for not only his heterogeneous subject matter, but also the extreme variation of technical means used to produce his series, ranging from anachronistic devices to the most advanced computer simulators and covering nearly all ground in between

SET #1

VIOLENCE + RESTRAINT

SET #2

TORN

SET #3

DOWN THE LINE

PHOTOSHOP GALLERY DISPLAY

SET #1:

VIOLENCE + RESTRAINT

I took these images of my friend Leon who started pretending to punch my camera, while he was doing this I managed to take 2 pictures of him in action with flash.

In response to these 2 images I decided to create a set titled “VIOLENCE + RESTRAINT” where I chose the middle picture as a tense hand against someone’s side which massively contrasts against the “violent” images.

When arranging my images on photoshop I also thought about the size of my images, the 2 “violent” images are landscape while the middle “restraint” image is square-shaped, I have chosen this so it symbolises how violence takes up more room in society and commands more attention while restraint often goes unnoticed.

This is my favourite set of images as I am really interested in the history of punk and grunge, whether it be musical history or the entire ethos of the movement itself which was spurred on by “punk idols” such as Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols and Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees. This set really reminds me of the punk mindset which was often taken to extremities such as violence.

I made all the images black and white to mimic the style of Francesca Woodman as she rarely shot in colour, this artistic decision was also made as all the images were quite inconsistent in colour which didn’t fit visually. I followed this rule for all of my sets of images.

I feel as if I successfully showed the emotions and sense of identity I wanted to display with this set of images, however as this was my first set to edit and photoshop it made me realise some problems with arrangement on photoshop where it was incredibly difficult to evenly align images with different dimensions.

SET#2:

TORN

These images were taken of myself on self-timer with flash, I wanted to explore teenage attitudes to sex and sexuality. I named this set “TORN” to imply a sense of torn feelings towards sex and sexuality while also displaying the literal images of torn tights.

This set massively reminds me of Francesca Woodman’s work as I wanted to keep the main subject’s face concealed- which is a massive theme in Woodman’s work.

The middle image on the left page of the book was also a massive inspiration (displays an image of someone taking off their shirt) as it really displays the exact sense I wanted to tackle in this set so I created my own version of this single image.

In this set of images I feel as if my inspirations are very defined and have clear connections to my finished product which communicate a sense of identity to the viewer which is subjective and relatable.

SET #3:

DOWN THE LINE

My third and final set is titled “DOWN THE LINE” as I wanted to explore so-called “self-destructive” behaviours which can cause problems in the future (or “down the line”).

I really like these images as they are not pretty or professional, they have a more raw and “homemade” feeling to them which conveys a feeling of secrecy- where the viewers are intruding on hushed behaviours.

I didn’t have any clear inspirations for this set, one could say I was inspired by Corinne Day and Ryan McGinley’s sense of exploitation in natural images with their muses but my photography style in these images are very different from any of my inspirations as I took the images from a high perspective to give a sense of overlooking and intruding.

I plan to create images with the main characteristics of Francesca Woodman’s work but with the personality of Corinne Day and Ryan McGinley’s work, showing possible self destructive behaviours which are camouflaged by the vitality of youth and teenage culture.

CLICK ON MOODBOARD BELOW FOR BLOG POST ON INSPIRATIONS

I don’t have a set idea of what I want to photograph, my view on the identity project was that I wanted to create a set of images that show a teenagers point of view on taboo subjects that are usually censored or lectured about by adults.

PHOTOSHOOT #1

I started by taking photographs of my belongings in an almost clinical, professional way- I quickly realised that my idea of the word identity doesn’t mean professional, clean photos but more gritty and personal images that show the young side of identity; where someone’s personal identity is taken apart, sculpted and analysed by society before being put back in a broken way where one has to “fit in” before they can continue.

For my first photoshoot I used the self-timer setting on my camera and set it up on a flat surface as I didn’t have a tripod.

My first photoshoot was in a family member’s flat that they had just moved into as I really liked how empty the space looked, I was the main subject for all my images so all the images were taken on self timer and with flash to make them look more grungy and raw.

MY FAVORITE IMAGES FROM PHOTOSHOOT #1

PHOTOSHOOT #2

My second photoshoot was around my apartment building and in my bedroom, once again I was the main subject in my photos but I also took pictures of my surroundings such as my bedroom and bedroom walls.

MY FAVORITE IMAGES FROM PHOTOSHOOT #2

PHOTOSHOOT #3

My third photoshoot was outside around St Brelade’s bay and in my hotel room in the St Brelade’s Bay Hotel. I took some pictures with my friends at a local youth club then I went to the Fisherman’s chapel and the graveyard around it as well as the beach.

All my images were taken with flash and some are out of focus but I believe this gives them a cool effect.

MY FAVORITE IMAGES FROM PHOTOSHOOT #3

As well as the images I’ve taken from these photoshoots I plan to use images from past projects however as I am still unsure of what I want my images to portray and how I am going to show identity.

IMAGE EDITING/EXPERIMENTATION

SET #1

The first set I chose to edit was on violence and restraint, I really liked the first image as it reminded me of the underground punk movement in the 70s- which was fuelled by violence and soon became mainstream thanks to the likes of The Sex Pistols and The Clash, introducing a new generation of teenagers to the turmoil of “punk life”

These images also reminded me of Ryan McGinley and Corinne Day’s work, showing an autobiographical display of adolescence culture.

First I started by turning each image black and white to mimic Francesca Woodman’s distinct black and white style as she rarely shot in colour.

Then I played with the exposure and contrast to create images that look like they were taken with a film camera so they did not look unnatural when I changed them in photoshop to look like a grid of polaroid images.

I wanted the two “violent” images highly contrasted so they looked shocking to the eye and stand out while the middle image (showing restraint) nearly sinks into the background as it has lots of dark negative space – demonstrating how quiet behaviours often go unnoticed.

I also turned up the texture so facial expressions and details on hands were more noticeable.

While I was editing these images on photoshop (see bottom of blog post for arrangements of sets on Adobe Photoshop Classic) I realised I didn’t like the way they lined up as two of the images were landscape while the other was portrait, so on photoshop I resized the middle image to make it more square-shaped so it would fit in with the other images better- then I exported this image back onto Photoshop.

SET #2

The second set I chose to edit was on bad habits, I really liked the third image as it looks similar to Corinne Day’s photography style with my take on it where I took the photographs from a higher angle to make the perspective look more unusual.

I decided I wanted every set to be black and white so I changed all the images into monotone and resized them to focus on the main subject of the image.

My images taken from this shoot are quite blurry and out of focus but I decided to keep them like that because I believe they look more raw and improvisational, as they show a short timeline which looks natural and intimate.

I edited all the images in the same style, playing with the texture to make the images look more grainy and heightening the contrast between black and white so the images are more drawing to the eye.

I turned up the contrast and whites while turning down the exposure and blacks to create more of a simple tonal spectrum that concentrates on the textures of the images and the main subject.

SET #3

Finally I edited my third and final set of images, these images reminded me of Francesca Woodman’s work, they carry a similar theme where identity is see through someone’s body, while their face remains anonymous.

First I changed all the images into black and white and resized them to centre on the main subject.

I wanted these images to have more of a minimal, light tonal composition to portray the idea of the pureness of the human body which is highly contrasted with the darker tones of the clothing the subject is wearing.

I turned up the contrast and whites while turning down the exposure and blacks to create more of a simple tonal spectrum that concentrates on the textures of the images and the main subject.

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP ARRANGEMENTS FOR ALL SETS

First I opened a new page and changed the first layer to landscape with a black background (as all the photographs are in black and white I believe this will make them stand out)

Then I imported my images into Photoshop and resized then arranged them in a way that I believe told a story about the images. After this stage I decided to experiment try and make them polaroid-style on Photoshop.

I created a new white background and resized it beneath the images so they would look like polaroid pictures. Overall I’m unsure if I like this style and if I will continue with it on all sets.

I repeated these steps with all my sets, then I flattened all the layers on each separate set to create my final sets of images.

CORINNE DAY

This image is of one of Day’s friends showing the aftermath of a fight, the image itself was taken with flash and is quite overexposed on the subject’s face, with the background much darker showing the image was taken at night.

Corinne Day, before her commercialised clean-cut style of photography, created images in an autobiographical sense- showing adolescence in a brutally honest and open sense.

Her style of ‘dirty realism’ was to become enormously influential within mainstream advertising. But where the imagery of nonchalant, nonconformist youth was for Day an extension of her life, in fashion the ‘look’ returned as pure, empty style

FRANCESCA WOODMAN

This image was taken with a slow shutter speed in order to enhance motion blurs, the image was probably taken on a timer as Woodman herself was often the main subject of her images, the image was also taken in natural lighting.

A common theme in Francesca Woodman’s work is fragmenting her body by hiding behind furniture, using reflective surfaces such as mirrors to conceal herself, or by simply cropping the image, she dissects the human figure emphasising isolated body parts.

In her photographs Woodman reveals the body simultaneously as insistently there, yet somehow absent. This game of presence and absence argues for a kind of work that values disappearance as its very condition.

This style of photography portrays representations of the female body, many photographers who have been inspired by Woodman often look at sexuality, gender roles and stereotypes.

RYAN MCGINLEY

This set of images were all taken in artificial light, some with flash and feature may different subjects. The polaroid way that the images are presented show a personal look towards the images, as it looks like a collection of memories with friends.

Early photographs by McGinley, whose pioneering, documentary-style approach captured the antics and daily activities of himself, his friends, and collaborators in lower Manhattan in the late 1990s.

The unmistakable marks of McGinley’s early work featured chromatic portraits of friends and lovers, with an energetic, spontaneous, and intimate—rather than objectifying—fixation on the human body.

IMAGE SELECTION/SUB-SELECTION

When taking my photos I didn’t have a set idea of what I wanted to photograph, my view on the identity project was that I wanted to create a visualisation of a teenage perspective of identity, showing possible self destructive behaviours which are camouflaged by the vitality of youth and teenage culture.

In order to make a fair selection I went through each photoshoot I did and created a 1-3 star rating system- 3 stars being most likely to use and 1 star being least likely to use on Adobe Lightroom Classic.

Then I colour-coded images with 2+ stars to create a sub-selection of images which I am interested in editing. These images are the ones I believe thoroughly show my inspirations in my individual perception of what I want to portray.

From this selection I then picked my final images that I wanted to edit/experiment with in Adobe Lightroom Classic, I colour-coded these images red.

After this I colour-coded images that I wanted to present as a set that carry a certain theme as when I present my images in a physical sense I would like them to be displayed as sets of polaroids so they have a more autobiographical sense.

When editing these images I want them to have a raw and intimate effect to them which portrays somewhat taboo subjects such as sexuality, restraint and self destructive behaviours. I believe the images I’ve chosen portray these feelings and once they go through the editing process I hope they are successful in the delivery of these emotions to the viewers.

The identity of a person or place is the characteristics they have that distinguish them from others.

Identity can be influenced by “place”, or belonging, your environment or upbringing. Many factors lie within someone’s personal identity, such as gender identity, cultural identity, social identity, geographical identity, political identity.

CLICK ON IMAGE BELOW FOR ANALYSIS OF INSPIRATIONS

These factors can change how people think of others and themselves which can also lead to a lack of identity where an individual may question who they are and may feel disconnected from who they are as a person.

INSPIRATIONS

CORINNE DAY

Corinne Day (Feb 19 1962 – Aug 28 2010) was a British photographer whose influence on the style and perception of photography in the early 1990s and onwards has been immense.

Self taught, Day brought a more documentary look to fashion imagery, in which she often included autobiographical elements. Her pictures unflinchingly document her life and relationships with a realist snapshot aesthetic-representing a youth culture set against the glamour of fashion and avoiding fictionalization or voyeurism.

Gaining notoriety both for a scandalous photo of Kate Moss in Vogue in 1993 and for pioneering so-called ‘grunge’ fashion photography, she was exiled from the mainstream fashion media-which had always been wary of her potential for controversy

FRANCESCA WOODMAN

Francesca Stern Woodman was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring either herself or female models. Despite her short career, which ended with her suicide at the age of 22, Woodman produced over 800 untitled prints.

Influenced by Surrealism and Conceptual Art, her work often featured recurring symbolic motifs such as birds, mirrors, and skulls. Many of her photographs show women, naked or clothed, blurred, merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured.

RYAN MCGINLEY

Ryan McGinley was born on October 17, 1977, in Ramsey, New Jersey. He received a BFA in graphic design at Parsons School of Design, New York, in 2000. That same year he staged his first solo show of photographs, The Kids Are Alright, inside an abandoned warehouse in New York’s SoHo neighbourhood.

McGinley’s work typically features young, white models outdoors, captured in a carefree mode that the artist calls an “evidence of fun. He gravitated toward street culture early in his adolescence and began hanging out with a band of self-proclaimed outsiders—skateboarders, club kids, graffiti artists, queer-identified youths, and indie musicians.

Claude Cahun, born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob was a French surrealist photographer, sculptor, and writer.

Schwob adopted the pseudonym Claude Cahun in 1914. Cahun is best known as a writer and self-portraitist, who assumed a variety of performative personae.

Cahun’s work is both political and personal. During World War II, Cahun lived in Jersey and was active as a resistance worker and propagandist

Cahun lived in Jersey during the Occupation, her resistance activities during that time led to her imprisonment.

A death sentence was commuted and she was freed from prison when Jersey was liberated. She lived in Jersey with her stepsister until her death in 1954.

Since her “rediscovery” over a decade ago, Claude Cahun has attracted what amounts to a cult following among art historians and critics working from postmodern, feminist, and queer theoretical perspectives.

Photographs of Cahun posing in the 1920s and 30s in various dramatic settings and guises have been displayed alongside contemporary works, showing the timelessness of her work.

DOUBLE/MULTI-EXPOSURES

Using my photos taken from the first photoshoot I did in the studio (see blog post here) I created the multi-exposed image above in Adobe photoshop by layering the images then turning down the opacity.

In this image I used Adobe photoshop to first layer the images and turn down the opacity, then I moved the images around and cut out then horizontally flipped the two images on the left and right side so they would frame the middle face.

I created the multi-exposed image above in Adobe photoshop by layering the images then turning down the opacity.

Overall, I like these images but I do not think they successfully incorporated the same psychedelic feeling that Ira Cohen’s images did, I think this is due to how professional the original images were and my lack of experience on photoshop as Ira Cohen often ensured a relaxed photography style, where subjects were photographed in a unorganised and luck-based way.