The Portrait Conundrum

 Any good portrait photographer will tell you the same thing, or something along the lines of… a good portrait requires a considerable amount of intimacy.  Obviously, not intimacy how society demands to define it, but emotional intimacy, or the ability to fake it.  Faking it involves a model who has experience being vulnerable and open, which is like trying to eat soup with a fork, or being a photographer that can capture the little moments between the “show” that people put on, which is a conditioned “faking it” based on societal expectations that most rarely drop until they get to know you.  The conundrum lies in the getting to know, and becoming comfortable enough to let go of the show, after spending a lifetime defining and refining it based on what you pick up along the way, completely repressing and hiding who you really are.  The primary reason I prefer to shoot nudes, as I have been saying for decades, is that the shedding of social armor demands honesty, and that vulnerable honesty is the only way to really see who people are… on their face; in their eyes; it has nothing to do with their body or nudity or bOObs.

 Another argument that I have made about shooting portraits is that being physically naked is not a requirement; not being afraid of it is the only requirement… good luck getting people to understand that.  If you are afraid to be naked, then you are still holding on to all your fears, and all I can capture is a portrait of someone who is afraid.  If I wanted to shoot societal based fear and delusion I could simply walk down the street with my camera up and hold the shutter button down without even glancing through the viewfinder.  I do not want to capture who you are pretending to be.  I love this species’ potential too much, and seeing so much of it wasted breaks my fucking heart.  So, to truly get deep enough to get a decent portrait, not a cookie cutter portrait, you have to initiate a kind of intimacy that is difficult, unless you are a trained psychologist.

 The best portraits are always of friends and lovers because of the comfort in those relationships.  Most my life I only shot lovers, because, being a shy backward dork, that was the only way I knew how:  fall in love with someone; get them to fall in love with you; initiate a relationship; pull out the camera; repeat and fade.  If I ever got a good portrait of someone, that’s why.  In my evolution, I tried for a brief period to shoot “strangers,” which was necessary to understand why things happen as they do and what was necessary to do this properly.  What I got were horrific photos of people who looked lost and terrified, not because I couldn’t, or didn’t capture them properly, but because they didn’t know me well enough to know what “character” I wanted them to play.  

 Simply telling them to be themselves, which made perfect sense to me, just created more confusion, because they didn't know me well enough to trust me with themselves, if they even remembered who their self really was.  I, ultimately, am not the social butterfly who can mind fuck them out of their game (in a short game scenario. In the long con I was golden), because I also didn't want to pull something out of them that matched up with who I wanted them to be in the moment; I just wanted to capture who they were, on a much deeper level than the aesthetic surface that they existed on (which demands a long con or complete trust and vulnerability that can only be found in a select few, primarily professionals).  As few imagine, I stopped doing this the wrong way a long time ago, and shy away completely from shooting portraits, because I don’t have the time or energy to get the beautiful ones.

 I will basically only shoot friends, ones that I’ve know for more than a couple months, unless it is a body based project that doesn't require genuine emotion. With friends there is a level of comfort that is workable, primarily conversationally.  There is still a necessity to dig a bit deeper into the psyche of the victim (jk), to truly understand who they are and what they’ve been through.  I have always wanted to start a shoot by putting my camera down and asking them to take off their clothes, then talking a little and asking them to put their clothes back on, just to cut through all the bullshit, but I’m still far too shy to accomplish what I’d like to accomplish.  Friends know I’m harmless, and I’m not playing any kind of game to get anything out of them other than the best work I can get.  If anything, I passively approach my work like a shrink.

 Everyone has those friends that they can talk to.  I’m one of those friends, that happens to have a camera in your face.  In my case, a good portrait requires me to be more emotionally available than the average person, especially one with a camera: don’t look at the camera; don’t smile.  Again, as with most things, this makes perfect sense to me, but that doesn't factor in being in a relationship with someone; that’s a whole deeper conundrum: most women, and a lot of men who won’t dare admit to it (because MAN), would much rather you cheated physically than had an “emotional” affair.  While nothing I am doing at this point would constitute an affair, there is a requirement to emotionally connect with people, preferably on a more intimate level of trust and openness. 

Try explaining that to someone who has been emotionally cheated on most their lives.  Try it.  It doesn’t work.  I can’t work without the ability to do that passively and innocently, so I just don’t shoot a lot.  I’ve tried to explain what I’m actually doing, but it doesn't work.  There have been fights about it; many many fights; the aftermaths of which could’ve easily landed me in jail, though I am yet to do anything wrong (well, except maybe that whole second marriage bit [sorry]).  I still have friends ask me to shoot them, but I usually don’t respond, or think of some reason why it won’t work.  I’ve got my wife; her complete beauty, inside and out, and her willingness to shoot is more than I could have ever dreamed of, but at times it feels like I’m writing about how beautiful the world is when I was born, raised, and continue to live, in a cave deep in the arctic; like I’m writing about life on the road, whilst having never left my hometown.  People who don’t understand doing it, will never understand why you have to do it.  People who aren’t creatives have a difficult time understanding creatives, which has been thoroughly documented… by creatives.