Posing (Part I)
March 4, 2010
A split takes place before every photograph of a person is made. At this point the subject either becomes aware that a photographer is taking a photograph, or he remains oblivious. If the subject remains unaware of the act of the photograph, the image unmistakably reveals this. But subjects become aware of the photographer, they pose, throwing up a mask of something inherently other than themselves. The departure from unaware to acknowledgement is an interesting one. Some subjects pose actively, thrusting an emotion or idea towards the camera. Others pose passively, attempting to erase from their faces any hint of their true thoughts. In either case, the change is irreversible – once we know we are being photographed, we cannot genuinely return to our previous state of unawareness.
Famous photographers have dealt with this differently. Diane Arbus confronted her subjects and told them to “pose,” allowing them to engage more directly with the photographer. As Susan Sontag puts in her book On Photography, “[Arbus] believed that self revelation is continuous…[she] wanted her subjects as fully conscious as possible, aware of the act in which they were participating.” Arbus’s subjects all pose for her camera, both actively and passively; but the genius of her work is not the capturing of her subjects’ emotions as much as her use of the poses her subjects present to her. Arbus’s subjects homogenize themselves by acknowledging her presence – her camera becomes the equilibrant. The poses her subjects present her unmistakably distinguish the photographs from those of unposed subjects, but unite Arbus’s specific series of images. This self-equalizing of her subjects paralells Arbus’s treatment of her unusual subjects in the way most photographers create portraits of “normal” citizens.
Walker Evans provides a different take on posing in his series of people on the New York City subway. Evans concealed a camera in his jacket, capturing photographs of subjects entirely unaware of their inclusion in an image-making process. Most of Evans’s subjects appear in the middle of daydreams, acknowledging neither Evans nor his hidden camera. These moments of privacy in a public space are both powerful and fascinating, but more interesting are the subjects who appear to look directly at Evans and his camera. In these photographs Evans captures something impossible to do with an exposed camera: a human-to-human interaction. When a subject is aware of a camera’s presence, his pose is always to some extent towards the camera and not the photographer. But in these photographs Evans’s subjects interact only with Evans himself, as they are oblivious of the camera’s presence. In what could be considered the most stripped-down and honest form of photography possible, Evans acts as a sort of camera himself, forcing his subjects to react to a photographer (apparently) absent of his camera. These “photographically unposed” images are in fact of humans posing for each other.
TMW
