(My eldest little boy, Thomas, in South Africa.) Despite my mini-rant on my fight against portraits while an editor and assigning them as a last possible option, it does not mean that I am not a fan of portraiture. They are an integral part of photography and go to the heart of what we do. Portraits are obviously an important element of documentary photography. What brought my issues to mind was Paul's discussion of magazines increasing use of them. I'm assuming that most in our group probably are already aware of the reason why magazines opt for portraits much more now: it's essentially a money issue. It has been a hotly debated topic. In general, making a portrait is much cheaper than producing a work of documentary photography. That's a big reason wy magazines such as Life and Look took a big death fall. It is absolutely the reason why many magazines will ask for a portrait of Tony Blair rather than a day in his life. There's little risk; you won't have to pay a photographer to actually spend days following a subject looking for real moments; you know what you'll get and can plan easily for it; you won't have to give up valuable potential ad space for photographs.
Politicians, celebrities and other news subjects and unfortunately public relations representatives have come to expect this and encourage it. They have a lot more control over the situation and how their client appears. The Los Angeles Times-my hometown newspaper-and several magazines had a small war with Hollywood over this issue. At it's height there were some publicity people who insisted on providing their own photographs or taking complete control over the photo shoot. For the L.A. Times, the were finally able to reign things in a bit and their staff photographers are making portraits of stars again, but that newspaper has much more pressing issues at the time.
At The New York Times our photography staff had diverse strengths, but for the most part were powerful story tellers and I think were much better served along with our readers by real photojournalism than a portrait. I got much more joy and satisfaction working with Joao Silva's project on the morgue in Bagdad; James Estrin's work on a Brooklyn kosher butcher; or Mike Kamber's project on homeless, HIV-positive teens than I did with portraits of CEO's or lawmakers.
Again, I have nothing against portraits in themselves. I have a long list of my favorite portrait photographers. My bookshelf includes several Annie Liebovitz books (her early book "Shooting Stars" is much different from what she does now); Diane Arbus and various compilations. Certainly, the roots of photography and it's popularity came from portraiture; portraits were no longer the property of those who could consign a painter. I respect a fine portrait photographer. There are a list of portrait projects and photographers that have really inspired me over the year. Cartier-Bresson, Steve McCurry and Sebastiao Salgado and others we've discussed have done incredible portrait work.
As a newspaper photographer, I had to shoot tons of them and spent much time searching for locations, hauling gear, setting up lights, or locked in a studio. It's a unique talent and my friends who are really good at it are generally doing well financially as well getting lots of magazine and corporate work.
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2 comments:
I am in complete agreement with you concerning the proliferation of portraits in newspapers and magazines - it's also a trend I dislike. It is definitely safer, but not necessarily better. Using a basic portrait, even if it is shot creatively or artistically, is the cheaper way out and they are increasingly being used more as fillers of space rather than advancing a story or offering additional information that is of value to a reader. I was pleased to hear last year that Jean-François Leroy, director general of Visa our l'Image in Perpignan, said he would no longer accept portraits as entries for the annual competition. He no longer considers simple portraits as viable photojournalism photos. I agree completely. It is easier to take a bunch of portrait photos of the grubby dirty faces of homeless people rather than spend several days or weeks actually documenting their lives. And how many times do we need to see the same faces of people over and over in newspapers and magazines. I think in many ways it's just laziness or the lack of time for many photo editors who know they can always throw in a portrait to fill the photo hole. I am pleased that editors at NY Times (one of the publications I still shoot for regularly) really want quality, journalism images to be as an important part of the story as the written word.
I sort feel obliged to stick up a bit for editorial teams. there are many reasons why portraits have become popular, and not simply because some picture editors are lazy penny pinchers. it works the other way too, some photographers have a reputation for invoicing for the most ridiculous of things and this sometimes contributes to an editor not even wanting to send people out on big jobs. there is also a school of thought that thinks why have 20 images that a reader can become numb to when 1 powerful holding shot would do the job better. That said, I hate a lazy portrait, and see no reason why commissioned ones should be so. Whilst at the NME it infuriated me that photographers claimed to know the title, yet did not add this to the way they tackled a portrait assignment. I have also been in situations when the photographer has gone the extra mile and the editor has up paged to accommodate them. Yes it would be brilliant if there were more magazines dedicated to longer documentary work. But this is the world now, and it is up to us as photographers (well I'm learning...) to work with it and make sure that the pictures those over worked "lazy" editors use to fill holes are the most innovative they can be.
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