The annual Taylor Wessing
Portrait Prize competition invites photographers from around the world to
submit prints of contemporary portraits. In 2013 the jury examined 5,410
images: this exhibition features the five winning entries, together with 55
other short-listed prints. In many ways the competition is the portrait
photographer’s equivalent of the “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” event and
it attracts a mixture of professional and gifted amateur photographers. The
overall winning photograph is expected to be technically outstanding and also
to successfully transmit the circumstances and character of a sitter or group.
“Say Cheese.” “Cheeeeeeese.” So
began hundreds of family portrait sessions in the Johnson household. We all
knew that the order to “say cheese” was a veiled command to smile for the
camera, which we duly did. I imagine that as I write this review, similar
conversations are occurring all around the world. In London, foreign visitors
will be posing in front of red telephone boxes with big smiles on their faces
as more photos for the digital family albums are captured.
The subjects for the short-listed
Taylor Wessing portraits do not “say cheese”. In some cases there is good
reason: Oscar Pistorius, standing in the dock accused of the murder of his
girlfriend in Antoine De Ras’s well-composed and technically perfect portrait
is in no position to raise a smile. Katie Walsh, leading female jump jockey and
subject of Spencer Murphy’s first prize winning portrait, looks positively
mournful in her mud-spattered silks and gives a good (and apparently accurate)
impression of wanting to be anywhere else but in front of the camera. But this
appears to be the whole point of the exercise: to accurately transmit the mood
and circumstances of the subject(s) through a single, technically perfect
photograph. Doubtless Murphy’s effort was a worthy winner.
And so I moved on through the
short-listed prints, marvelling at the wide range of settings, the control of
lighting and the imaginative compositions (all three highlighted in Linda Brownlee’s
study of author Zadie Smith), still searching that beaming smile to remind me
of what portrait photography used to be about. Glum and serious expressions
abounded: Clare Hewitt’s sitter (“Untitled (Latvia)”) has her eyes closed.
Public figures such as Charlie Brooker, Kofi Anand and Sol Campbell appear
self-contained; lost in thought. Patrick Fraser’s ballerina, Carla Korbes, is
unlikely to be able to raise a smile as she stands, shivering in a bikini, in
the early morning mist in the middle of a road somewhere near Seattle.
Sometimes the circumstances are poignant, sometimes they are depressing. I was
particularly impressed by Miri Mor’s portrait of a sad security man, “George”,
photographed peering through the window that forms one quarter of the side of
his hut in a workplace in Eastern Europe that was soon to be closed down: no
wonder he is gloomy.
And then, at the far end of the
exhibition space, I saw it: a smile! Not just any smile but an open-mouthed,
warm and welcoming, beaming smile! Indeed, Rosie Hallam’s portrait of a
Ghanaian teacher (“Choir Master”, see below) lit up the room. Here at last was
somebody who, whatever the circumstances, was going to enjoy life and make the
most of it, somebody who understood the meaning of saying “cheeeeeeese”. Thank
goodness for that!
Rosie Hallam: "Choir Master"
Learning Points,
Future Work and References:
Portraits aren’t my scene,
although I occasionally produce them for themed photographic competitions.
However, studying the books of portraits from this and previous “Taylor
Wessing” competitions would certainly help me to appreciate what makes a
(really) good photographic portrait, even if I was unable to encourage my
sitter(s) to smile.
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