Facade ??

Tonight i've been doing some thinking about my project.

I've been thinking about family portraits and what they are exactly.

In my opinion, I think that formal portraits hide SO much. The photographer doesn't know the ins and outs of someones life, and they don't want to know, they want to make the family look good and look happy and friendly. But... is that true to the family ?

Where does a portrait go ? It is usually framed and hung somewhere in the family home, usually somewhere on show to visitors. So it is an object to portray happiness to other people ? Is it to fool the family themselves that they are that happy and friendly and close? Is it a facade ?

My mom has always wanted a Family Portrait done of her, me and my 2 brothers. I've never asked her why so tonight I decided to do just that. I asked her what her motivation is for wanting a family portrait. Her answer was... "so I can look at it and think to myself 'see we were happy' So I can look at it to see us all together"

So in this respect, it's a facade. Because in truth we are not all together, and are we really that happy ? My brother lives with his girlfriend, my other brother is away at boarding school, and as of September I will be away at uni, leaving my mom home on her own. So will it act as a memory to her, almost like a keepsake. It is not a reflection of younger years because naturally as siblings we argued, we were sad from loss, we never really had a family relationship where we all sat down together for 'family time'.

It's so difficult and really mind-boggling. I feel really interested in this whole idea of it being fake and posed, I don't think they are true to the family. I want to follow this into my final product, I just don't know how ! HELP !!

Personal Family Photographs

These photographs were given to me this Tuesday night, so I havent had a chance to annotate them and start picking at them yet.

They are photos of my Mom's mom and dad (and their moms and dads). I never met my Nan and only met my Grandad a couple of times, so it is hard to look at these images without having what she has told me floating around in my thoughts.

Family Photographs

I like in this image how the youngest child is reaching up to the fathers jacket. Is it a cry for affection or is it a loving gesture ?

The man's attention is not in the same place as the woman and children. His head is turned, is this to portray superiority ?

Michelle Caplan

She is a mixed media collage portrait artist. She uses this technique to tell stories of the lives of people who are missing or dead. She is often commissioned to do these works, people send her images, text, fabric, anything they want included to her and she puts these collages together.

She does them knowing nothing personally about the people.

I think they are really beautiful, acting almost like a modern day cameo. They can be passed through generations remembering loved ones.

I am going to attempt to create my own collage in this style but using photos and letters from my Dad. Caplan works on a non-personal level, but I want to see if I can create something just as beautiful as her work but on a very personal level.

Photoshop editing

I took three photos of Becky because I wanted to experiment with the idea of people having layers. I feel that portraits often hide the truth, because everyone can put a smile over the top of true emotion when they want to hide it from the world.

So there must be more than what meets the eye.

I wanted to use photoshop to lower the opacity of each layer and alter colours to see if I could find a way to portray the inner emotions in a person.

The top layer on this image is still to forceful, it doesn't work because you can't see enough of the underneath layer.

This image is much more what I was trying to achieve. The underneath layer is almost as visible as the top layer. The top image colours are muted down slightly to show coldness and lies, and the underneath layer has warmer colours to show truth and pure emotion.

Death Portraits

In Victorian England it was common for family to have a death portrait taken when a family member died.

Sometimes the person would be alone in their coffin, with decoration around the coffin. Other times the rest of the family would pose around the corpse.

In some cases, it was difficult to distinguish which was the corpse and which were the living. The way to note which is dead, is to look whose face was very clear. Due to long exposure on the camera, the living tended to blur slightly.

Triangles

In family portraits, past and present, there is most often a triangle to be found.

The man is traditionally known as 'the man of the house', he is superior, he is always in charge and this is always portrayed in family portraits. However, it is not always obvious.

This is the most obvious line of hierarchy I have found in a family portrait.