subject echo: that pensive gaze

when i saw the top image (taken by Jocelyn Lee) of Dr. Rachael Phelps in a New York Times Magazine article on "The New Abortion Providers" it brought to mind Hellen van Meene's photograph of another gazing lady.

the photo pair gives me the uncanny thought of van Meene's teenage subject—with her blond curls, set mouth, baroque hand gestures, and her expressive and introspective gaze—growing out of her awkward adolescence (van Meene's specialty) and into the visual role of the calm and caring doctor.

in the Times article, Dr. Phelps speaks about how chronic pain she experienced as an adolescent girl is what led her to her path as a doctor at Planned Parenthood.

i think you can see the deep feeling we associate with adolescence transform into empathy—on the part of both the subject and the viewer—in the images above.

squirrel portraits

what better way to dip one's toes back into the frothy waters of the blogosphere than with pictures of cute, fuzzy squirrels?

i've been pondering the tropes of editorial portraiture a bit lately, and i have to say, my hat was off to the photo editors at the New York Times when i read the recent article about serving squirrel meat at trendy restaurants in England ("Saving a Squirrel by Eating One").

there is no way to argue with the brilliant sequencing of the three photos in this article. the article moves through commercial photo clichés even as it moves through the animal's lifecycle: from cute overload-style stock photography (happy red squirrels vs. grumpy invading grey squirrels), to commissioned classic editorial portraiture (in this case, stuffy British gamekeeper complete with three-piece tweed suit, Wellies, hounds, and...dead squirrels), to minimalist food portraiture (portrait of the squirrel as...lunch). amazing.

the times imitates art

here's a bit of a subject echo that hit me today while reading the New York Times article "Operation Lets Muslim Women Reclaim Virginity."

here's Ed Alcock for the Times:

and Taryn Simon from her project the American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar:
both photos have that klieg-lit surgical theater of apotheosized artificial virginity aspect going for them.

don't get me wrong, i love cyborgs. but don't forget: your subject is your main enemy.

virginity

you didn't think i was going to let the week go by without talking about this photo from the "Students of Virginity" article in the New York Times Magazine, did you?

in the past, i've discussed the way in which editorial photography stands apart from other portraiture. in this case, the editorial perspective is fairly extreme. the article seemed to me bent on portraying Janie Fredell of Harvard's True Love Revolution chastity club as a someone who is certainly determined (and chaste), but maybe a little annoying or misguided (oxytocin bonds you like emotional superglue to your first sex partner?). maybe that was the reporter's take on her, or the editor's, but it seems to have seeped into the art direction for the photography as well. or is it just me?

Fredell stares at us fiercely in Katherine Wolkoff's portrait, without a smile — though her fierceness is a bit offset by the casual drape of her arm. the photo caption tells us that "virginity is extremely alluring," as she says, and indeed both the virginity and the allure are present. it's hard to know, in the collaboration between subject, photographer, and editor, just whose choice it was to pick a bright clean white room, a white eyelet blouse with a gathered hook & eye bust, or the saintly backlit window light, which in turn makes the focus a bit soft all over.

(question: is the real punctum her deep philtrum, or the hint of a locket tucked away under her blouse?)

did anyone else react to this picture? or the ones of Harvard's other True Love revolutionaries?

to see more of Katherine Wolkoff's work, check out her site here. i especially like this project, and i like her new work on deerbeds.

portraits that tell a story

last week i got totally sucked in reading a New York Times article about Margaret B. Jones, the author of the brand new memoir Love and Consequences. the House & Home section article summarized Margaret Jones's story of growing up as a mixed white and Native American foster child in a large African American family in South Central Los Angeles—how she inevitably ended up in a gang dealing drugs, watching her brothers get shot, only to lift herself up into state college and a lovely 4 bedroom home in an up-and-coming ghetto of Eugene, OR.

i thought about posting one of the photographs that accompanied the article...i think because i had stared at the slideshow so intently and had thought a lot about the different lives and childhoods Margaret Jones and her daughter Rya (who Jones described as "the first white baby I ever saw") had experienced. Rya looked so blonde and girly, wearing skirts and loving fairytale canopies while breeding pitbulls and loving the gang members in her extended family... the contradictions grabbed me, and i felt that they were illustrated in the family photo. ultimately, i reminded myself that Subjectify is more of an artsy blog than a showcase for editorial photojournalism. plus, hadn't i already posted a critique of the construction of identity in the NYT's house/home/real estate portraiture?

today, i read the follow-up article in the Times breaking the story that the entire memoir was made up, and that Jones's real name is Margaret Seltzer who in their words "is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles...with her biological family." Seltzer had completely duped Scribner, Riverhead, and the New York Times. how was she caught? her older sister saw the above photograph accompanying Thursday's newspaper article and called the publisher to break the news. by contrast, here's the author photo that accompanied today's exposé:


reading the original article i did not doubt Jones's story at all; i was enthralled by it. but i definitely stared at those pictures in the slideshow for a long time, trying to make sense of it.

(update: Conscientious gave his take on editorial photography vs. portraiture—pointing out that editorial work troubles the photographer-subject-viewer triangle by adding in the expectations of the entity commissioning the photograph to illustrate the story they want to tell. it's a great point; thanks Joerg.)

breakthrough

i have to admit that i haven't always been a huge fan of Ryan McGinley.

but i was really impressed by his collection of portraits for the "Breakthrough Performances" issue of the New York Times Magazine. i loved the look of the photographs, and the consistency of the aesthetic as a project, even through he was shooting diverse personalities in locations all over the country (plus the white cliffs of Dover). i like the way the light is sometimes hazy, or the way that blurry objects or bright lights obscure the subjects' faces.

i think the Jennifer Jason Leigh images (one is above) and the Paul Dano images are my favorites.

as a bonus: they're also posted up on Tiny Vices.