BLOG # 11

A photograph. . . Ivor Stravinsky, composer of the Rites of Spring, discordant to some, for others the wonderful beginning of modern music. The Rites of Spring was created in 1913, a period when so many of the arts were blooming into the Modern before being so cruelly cut down by the First World War.

Stravinsky was called the ‘father of modern music’.

A modernist in a modernist setting. A portrait that gives us so many clues. The music note on its side, so clear, so symbolic. Stravinsky himself, relaxed for sure, a partner with the music, but still it overawes him.

Just look at that composition, so daring, so graphic, pulling us to Stravinsky himself. An uncompromising image, bold and unafraid. A stark combination of a white wall and a black piano. The very modernity of the composition tells us so much about Stravinsky.

Suddenly I realised that
I had been admiring the shape of a piano
and it hit me: the piano shape – strong, hard,
sharp, linear, beautiful in its strong, harsh way,
it was really the echo of Stravinsky’s work, his own music.

This image is often referred to as a primary and famous example of ‘environmental portraiture’ in photography.

This concept, Environmental Portraiture, demands that a portrait should not just contain the sitter but also a plane of environmental information, creating a more informative image. An image capturing the essence of the sitters life and work in the context of their surroundings. The environment tells us more, gives us more information.

Here we have another father. Arnold Newman, the photographer of this portrait, often referred to as the ‘father of environmental portraiture’.

Me, I’m not wholly convinced of this honour. It is certainly correct that Arnold Newman grasped hold of the concept and developed it with great success. I am not convinced that he was the first photographer with this idea in mind.

Just look at this photograph by Matthew Brady taken in 1864.

Or this taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936.

The setting is telling us something about the sitter, giving us those subtle clues about their lives. It could be that when these portraits were taken the environment was less considered, less specific, less particular, more of an afterthought.

This is the point where Arnold Newman took off, pushing the boundaries of traditional portrait photography during the middle of the 20th century, deliberately placing his sitters in an informative relationship with the setting.

I didn’t just want to make a photograph
with some things in the background.
The surroundings had to add to the composition
and the understanding of the person.
It is what they are, not who they are, that
fascinates me.

Reading about Arnold Newman I came across this quote

But it was not uncommon for him to
find new life in images with different crops.

It got me thinking.

Recently I had been to an exhibition of famous photographs accompanied by contact sheets of shots taken at the same time as the more well-known image was caught. I noticed how many variations of the well-known photographs were in the contact sheets.

The well-known photograph and also the shot before, and the shot after.This way, that way, more to the side and then more to the other side. Wider, closer, one angle and then another. The subject in all kinds of positions, all over the place. And then, the magic one, the right one, the famous one.

Then cropping. Cropping into the frame to reframe, to create an alternative composition, another way of presenting the subject. Somehow I had imagined that the famous photographers always knew how to get the shot, there and then, a lifetime experience producing an instant masterpiece. How naive. I should know better. And then I came across a contact sheet from Arnold Newman’s Stravinsky shoot.

See what I mean? Even the genius photographer has to go searching, exploring, trying it out. Look how even the hero shot is cropped for drama and graphic composition. I was relieved. No wonder we, I, take so many shots. So many shots that don’t quite make it. If we’re lucky, we find the right one, the hero shot.