Does the identity of the sitter matter?

[eli griggs]

Vivian Maier did not document her work or even present it to the world. But she left us with some impressive street portraits.

Yes, and the impact of her work, like that if many great street photographers, is all in the complete context of each photograph.

A man, woman or a child gazing into a shop window and the conditions around them, is an entire narrative that only suffers, if their names are made part of the title, if the photograph has one.

There is always an exception, but it would be rare.

IMO.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I casually collect. I have portraits of anonymous subjects - from garden-variety vernacular daguerreotypes to high-end late 19th-early 20th century studio portraits. I find them fascinating as windows into people who otherwise are lost to time. I also have quite a few cartes-de-visite of known subjects (mostly Mathew Brady cdvs, but a few by others), and a decent collection of circus sideshow performers whose identities are known, some of whom are famous (Tom Thumb and his wife, Madame Sherwood the fat lady, etc). The "celebrity" photos (for lack of a better term) are more a reflection of the culture of the time in which they were taken, as their images would have been sold and shared as a form of cultural currency. And there are a couple of daguerreotypes in my collection that I am proud and humbled to be the custodian of - one is an anonymous daguerreotype, but taken by Mathew Brady, and the other is a daguerreotype of William Maxwell Evarts, as a young man. If you're not familiar with who he was, he was an attorney for the state of New York in the 1850s who co-wrote the winning argument in the case of Lemon V. New York, which was the case that declared an enslaved person brought into a free state was automatically free. He went on to be the Attorney General of the United States for Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State under Rutherford B. Hayes. I look at both of them and appreciate the aesthetics of the anonymous portrait, and the history represented by the Evarts portrait.

To me, I don't think it matters much who the subject is, or if I know who they are. I buy all kinds - anonymous subjects, subjects whose identity is known but are not famous, and "celebrity" images. They're all fascinating in their own way. I think with "celebrity" images (especially modern ones), for me to collect them it would require them to be a higher aesthetic standard. For example, I wouldn't buy a paparazzi snap of Queen Elizabeth II, but I would have no objection to owning the Annie Liebowitz portrait of her in her regalia standing in a field in Scotland (not that I could afford that image).

Street photos are another animal altogether. For them to be interesting, they NEED to tell a story. The identity of the subject is at best secondary, and in most cases either irrelevant or even a distraction. Think of the Diane Arbus photo of the boy with the toy grenade - the story the image tells is far more interesting and important than the back-story of the boy, and if we were to know it, it would become a distraction and diminish the image because we'd be talking about the specifics of the child's life story, rather than reading it as a universal tale. Or at the very least, it would completely change the narrative being told.

 

[cowanw]

I casually collect. I have portraits of anonymous subjects - from garden-variety vernacular daguerreotypes to high-end late 19th-early 20th century studio portraits. I find them fascinating as windows into people who otherwise are lost to time.

There are a few of us here who collect in a similar fashion. Have you had occasion to research and name an originally anonymous image. If so how did that make you feel about it?
Based on what I know about culture and history and looking at an image, I often find I can make a reasonable guess at the story behind a photograph and am quite chuffed if I can make an identification. Here is an image of a man by Andre Kertesz's second wife Rogi Andre. Notice the scar on his face, making a two sided visage. It turns out he is the contact for the dubious acquisition of a portion of the middle eastern collections of the US east coast - both a high status society figure and an Middle Eastern fixer.
I appreciate the image even more knowing who he is.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

There are a few of us here who collect in a similar fashion. Have you had occasion to research and name an originally anonymous image. If so how did that make you feel about it?
Based on what I know about culture and history and looking at an image, I often find I can make a reasonable guess at the story behind a photograph and am quite chuffed if I can make an identification. Here is an image of a man by Andre Kertesz's second wife Rogi Andre. Notice the scar on his face, making a two sided visage. It turns out he is the contact for the dubious acquisition of a portion of the middle eastern collections of the US east coast - both a high status society figure and an Middle Eastern fixer.
I appreciate the image even more knowing who he is.

I have one (I'll have to photograph it and upload it later) that I would like to know the identity of - he's a gentleman of distinction, with a big mustache, holding a copy of (I believe) the NY Times, but I can't make out the date on it. The print appears to be a contact print from an 11x14 negative, so obviously someone of wealth and means. There's another one I have that is a cabinet card from a Russian photographer taken in Yalta prior to the Revolution, of a young woman in 1910s fashion. I have no idea who she is, or where to start tracking her down, but that one intrigues me because she looks like she could be the child of a Duke or Prince, and may not have survived the Revolution. The other reason I think/fantasize that about her is that the photographer has all his awards listed on the back mark, including having photographed the royal family.

 

[snusmumriken]

Considering Curtis to be an ethnographer is problematic - while he was photographing the embers of a fading way of life, he often put people in "traditional" costumes that had little to nothing to do with their own specific culture/history, in the name of a more interesting photo.

I wasn’t aware of that. Makes the whole thing still more complicated!

 

[koraks]

I wasn’t aware of that.

Well, it's slightly tendentious as I understand it. He did pay his sitters to have their portrait taken. He did photograph them wearing a blanket etc. that he brought, but then again, by the time Curtis started photographing these tribes, many of their members were wearing Western dress already. That's hardly 'traditional' either, but it would have been more true to life had he photographed them in a flowery dress.

Curtis did polish up the scene and the photograph to conjure up the image of the North American Indian the way they must have looked like somewhere in the 19th century, by his own reconstruction. This effort at understanding their culture, however, seems legitimate and he seemed to be profoundly and remarkably unbiasedly interested. Don't forget his primary objective was not to make pretty pictures - he wanted to create an all-encompassing ethnography of these people before it was too late - although his main 'fault' was perhaps that he actually was too late.