portraits

Fayum: Geoffrey Frosh

Geoffrey Frosh, photographer
8×10 inches, platinum-palladium print on Fabriano 5

In a recent interview with photographer, printer and blogger, David Chow, he asked
How do you normally approach taking a portrait of someone? 

A number of specific things have to be present or in place, and this is easy to talk about: atmospherics, equipment, the person. By these I mean the quality of light, the configuration of objects and space, time to make the photograph; quick and fluid access to large format equipment; a willingness to be photographed and a desire to photograph that person. Very few of my photographs are made by appointment, but there are times when I sense that a photograph can be made, and at these times I try to attend to this instinct and keep equipment on hand — even if, after lugging a case of large format equipment around, I don’t touch the gear. Which brings me to the stuff of portraiture that is harder to talk about: anticipating and feeling, harmonizing the relationships between subject and all the visual components of a frame, observing and becoming part of the image. Henri Cartier-Bresson quoted Cardinal de Retz, saying that ‘there is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment’, and this has held true for a lot of photographic practice. But another way of considering portraiture is that all relationships swell and ebb, and the photographic portrait comes from  - and to paraphrase de Retz – a most pregnant moment. There is nothing in this world that does not come from a swelling and ebbing process, in other words. So, to put it simply, I make a portrait at that moment that is swelling with feeling. I learned a lot about this from spending time with Rondal Partridge, and studying his mother’s (Imogen Cunningham)* work.

 

I strongly believe that what makes the Fayumi portraits so enduring and captivating is that they were rendered out of the most pregnant of moments – a consideration of one’s own mortality.

 

*Cunningham, as a young photographer, was instructed by one of her teachers. Prof. Robert Luther, to only photograph him when she thought he was most deeply concentrating on a mathematical problem. [from Imogen Cunningham, interview with Edna Tartaul Daniel, June 1959, transcript, Regional Oral History Project, University of California, Berkeley, p. 59]. For a great read about her portraits and collection of images, see Richard Lorenz’ wonderful Imogen Cunningham: Portraiture. (Amazon Link)

Fayum: Sebastian Mera

Sebastian Mera, Duckspool. 1989
8×10 inches, platinum-palladium print on Fabriano 5

Here’s something else about the Fayum portraits – they were intended as a part of a process, a becoming. The person, (in almost all cases, as far as I understand) alive, presenting him or herself to the painter, knew full well where the painting would end up. With that knowledge, there must have been some faith; that the painting would stand for that person in the netherworld. And perhaps do more than just stand for the person. The portrait becomes the person, the person as she existed in the living realm becomes the portrait in the world beyond. The portrait is the contact, the connector, the interface, the relay, the thing itself.

 

Most of my strongest portraits have been printed directly from the original negatives, which are either 8×10 or 11×14 inches in size. They are big sheets of film, made with big cameras. And they are made in the faith that by rendering a person, I take and become a bit of him or her. Recently, I was asked to describe my ‘process’ for an upcoming publication:

 

“I like to keep my process as simple, repeatable and disciplined as possible, so that I can fully concentrate on the expressive aspects of printing. There is a conundrum here, because, after all, these three components can kill ‘expression’. I’ll put it another way – I strive to not let process get in the way of eloquence, while being fully aware that each informs and conditions the other. I use HP5 film, process in Pyro PMK, and print using exactly those methods described in Mike Ware’s and my approach to the ammonium-based platinum-palladium printing process. The chief variable is paper, and I prefer to work with highly calendered surfaces such as found on Wyndstone Vellum. I also use Crane’s Business Card Stock Natural or Pearl White Wove (once sold as Crane’s Platinotype by Bostick and Sullivan), Fabriano 5 and Van Gelder Simili Japon.

 

From the outset, when I began to work with platinum-palladium printing around 1980, I was interested in the expressive capacities of this process rather than the ‘alternativeness’ of photographic practice. Much of my work is concerned with how (big) metaphysical questions are resolved in nuanced ways by the day-to-day experience. Nuance seems to define the platinum-palladium print, and so I prefer to work with the ammonium process more than any other. Mike Ware’s understanding of the need for clarity, and his constant call to apply Occam’s razor whenever possible, have had a profound influence on my work.”

 

The image here, a photograph of Spanish photographer Sebastian Mera, is a scan of an actual platinum-palladium print.

Portraits at the End – the horror of S21

At the Royal Ontario Museum, photos document Cambodia’s record of horror.

Fayum – Allan Jones

Allan Jones. 1992
Platinum-palladium print from an 8×10 negative

Allan, a painter and dear friend, wrote me in an email:

“I feel as if painting is becoming part of my body  …  i get stopped often -now – sometimes and feel what i only thought about feeling all these years  …   that feeling beyond art, or better, what is truly inside of art …”

I believe that we ache for reassurance. And if it comes from our ancestors, or from several millennia past, the ache begins to become balmy, even sweet.  Reassurance; that what I feel is okay, that there is some sense and purpose in the pain of the present, and that my pain-joy-loss-beauty is only here because of what came before me. The Fayum are important to me, and to us I believe for this reason: they communicate, they have a presence, despite the millenia that separate the moment of their making from the present. In this sense, they are beyond art.

Fayum – Rachel. Black Shirt.

Rachel. Black Shirt. Sewanee, TN. November, 2007.
from 11×14″ negative

When being portrayed, and knowing that only the future will look back, what do you look at? I believe there is a particular and intense communication, full of hope and urgency ( this, this, is gone, pay attention, forever to this moment ) that bears down on the making of a portrait, and then emanates from it. I know this is what happened with the faiyumi. Forever, you who look from the future, forever, I give you this moment.

Fayum – Luca, Rachel and Kiran

Luca, Rachel and Kiran. Dawn, Paros, Greece. May, 2010.
from and 8×10″ negative

Photographing at dawn, with an 8×10 camera all set up and waiting for the family to awaken to the ancient simmering light of the Aegean; I slept little on these nights, when I could see blazing sunsets turn to a disappearance of sea into sky, and watch the softest softness impossibly turn into the singular harsh light of the Aegean islands.

Only Parian marble can defy that light. And only Parian marble could be made to render that light with acuity and truth. Just like photography. No wonder the Egyptian artists who painted the Fayum portraits, while remaining true to their funerary practices, embraced the representational traditions of the ancient Greeks. It was all about truth in materials, and truth to materials.

And I loved watching the horizon, and watching my family sleep.

Fayum – Rachel in Venice

Rachel and Kiran, Dawn. Venice, April 2010
from 8×10 negative

From Euphrosyne Doxiadis’ ‘introduction’ in The Mysterious Fayum Portraits, Thames and Hudson, 2000:

“The viewer becomes involved in direct communion with the person portrayed, who is as if in limbo, in a twilight zone between life and death. Looking at the most beautifully painted among the Fayum portraits is a unique and enriching experience…An experience I had in Berlin convinced me of the power inherent in the best of the Fayum faces: I was left in a storage room with about twenty portraits, and when the door closed behind me I felt a very strange sensation— that I was not alone.”

Perhaps that is it: we are not alone, we are not alone, we are not alone. Yet with each utterance, with each brush of this kind of sensation, we sense the aching singularity of each moment, each one of us, each loneliness.

Thirstily reading the current issue of Orion, it made me happy to see the work of two friends Masao Yamamoto and Kathleen Jamie, appear in the magazine. Kathleen’s poem, Roses, struck me with particular force. The last verse reads:

I haggle for my little
portion of happiness,
says each flower, equal, in the scented mass.

PS: This issue of Orion also has an excellent piece by David Sobel about the pitfalls of the environmental and place-based education bandwagon, and a touching, powerful short piece by Julia Alvarez (who recently  published ‘A Wedding in Haiti’). Again, I find another resonance, along with my work in Haiti, with the Fayum and a particular kind of photographic portraiture. From her short article:

“The ancient Mayans recognized a … truth in the phrase en lak ech, which means “you are the other me.” it’s a way of thinking about ourselves as interconnected. We cannot exist in any meaningful way without each other.

As we look to the future, we need to look back to places like Haiti to learn how to use our resources wisely.”

Well put, and I wholeheartedly agree, as detailed in another section of my web site. And this quote also articulates why I consider my seemingly very personal portraits as being on the same trajectory as my work in Haiti.

Fayum – Lizzie Motlow

Lizzie Motlow, Cheyne Street, Edinburgh. February, 1986.
A few days after the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster.
Platinum-palladium print from 8×10″ negative

My friend and fellow photographer was visiting from the USA, when we saw live footage of the disastrous mis-launch. The accident affected Lizzie deeply, being, like me, of that generation whose visions and wishes for the future grew along with the space programs of the USA and USSR. Even stranger, in this particular case, was the coincidence that the Challenger pilot, Michael J. Smith, shared Lizzie’s birthday. I remember talking about the disturbing tension between the tragedy of the event and the photographs, which were and still are so beautiful. And so with the fayiumi, encapsulating as they do the tragedy of loss and mortality in beauty.

 

Space Shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after take-off. source: Wikimedia Commons

Fayum – Clive Strutt

Clive Strutt, South Ronaldsay, Orkney. June, 1983
platinum-palladium print from 8×10″ negative

A dear friend, with home I shared many eccentric moments, Clive is a (I think wonderful) composer. He still lives in Orkney. As I consider the fayiumi, and reflect on my early portraits such as this one, the circular nature of influences surprises me. Clive introduced me to the beauty of Eastern Orthodox Church music, and I cannot help but marvel at the linkages between Greece, Egypt, and early Christianity in terms of both music and the portrayal of the face. Needless to say, the music of Arvo Part now forms the rim of my sensory crucible. But at the time this image was made, Clive was very patiently nudging me from the French Impressionists (Satie especially— and I think that shows in the portrait of Clive) to Gustav Holst and William Blake. I will be forever grateful.

Fayum – Victoria Rivera

Victoria Rivera, Coyolillo.
Honduras. 1995. platinum-palladium print. 8×10 inches

 And then, the Fayum portraits are not distinguished just by the rendering of eyes. The place at which the face looks is, I think, what makes them feel timeless; a place that is somewhere beyond the viewer, and both after and before what is experienced. Victoria Rivera, a remarkable lady bringing up what seemed like a small hoard of grandchildren, lived in a remote village that could only be accessed via a 2 hour hike. Fascinated by the large camera, when I asked her to not move while I focused, she sat, very, very still — and looked into and beyond the lens. I still recall the thrill and chill I felt as she looked into the camera, through the ground glass, (past my eyes that were trying to focus on her eyes,) head and beyond.

The correspondence between the fayiumi and my portraits has a lot to do with the process of photographing with a large format camera.

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