Project: Proposal

1)      For my project, I would like to examine the presence of identity in portraits. As we discussed in class, some portraits convey a greater sense of the subject’s identity while others convey a greater sense of the artist’s identity and many fall somewhere in between. Personally I would like to focus my work on photos that emphasize the subject’s identity. I think that a lot of the sense of identity is generated by a subject’s awareness and relationship to the rest of the world. By awareness I mean their conscious ability to experience the moment of the photograph; we as viewers know that the subject is capable of comprehension and as such we are able to relate to and possibly empathize with them on some level. And by relationship to the rest of the world I am including their relationship to the setting, to other subjects, between the subject and photographer, between the viewer and the subject, etc. However, the subject’s identity that is created through the photograph falls somewhere on the scale between ‘real’ identity and constructed identity (either by the photographer or the viewer). I would like to explore either how identity is created or the extent to which that identity is ‘real’.

2)      I’m drawn to several types of portraiture, but what they all have in common is that the viewer (at least I am) is interested not only in the formal elements of the photograph, but also in the identity of the subject. I’m particularly interested in Richard Avedon’s work, a lot of which has a very staged quality about it. But I also admire Henri Cartier-Bresson's street photography that still encompasses an aspect of portraiture. And I love Helen Levitt's work, which is somewhere in between those two extremes.  

3)      I am fairly positive that I want to approach this topic through black and white, but I am unsure whether I want to use film or digital. I am also unsure if I would print with a printer or in the dark room. I think it might be best to use subjects whom I am somewhat familiar with in order to be able to address the issues of identity that I am most interested in.