Ex 4b: Portrait of Nando at the Tate

I admit that asking a good friend to be the model for the second portrait session was a bit like cheating. But I had realised, in my first attempt, the importance to have the time to explore a face. Time, instead, is a bit of a luxury when portraying an unknown, busy person. And I feel incredibly clumsy and nervous when I pretend I am a photographer and ask people for their time… So it was good fun and a good laugh to take these pictures of Nando at the Tate. We probably looked quite credible in our endeavour: as we came back into the cafeteria from the terrace, several people said hello, just in case Nando was some sort of artist.

Having to think of portrait in a separate exercise from “activity” and “relationship” was very useful to make me understand what is in a portrait.

Looking back at the cook in Mombasa… I did not take many pics of the cook stirring in the pot because I had that feeling that these pictures said more about the verb, “to cook” and took focus away from the subject, the cook/chef. What I needed was less action and more context.

I also started to realize the difference between “taking a portrait of a person which is already set up to capture my attention” (e.g. in a particular moment, in a particular light) -which is the kind of portraiture that I had mostly done when travelling -…. and, instead, “taking a person as a starting point”, and act so that s/he can be put in a suitable context, in that good light, in that particular posture which captures and highlight something important about that person. So, not only I need to train myself to spot and capture these portraits which are already there, ready, in my face… but I must learn how to create that special context, to find that particular angle that makes the difference between a passport picture and a portrait.