Is Deadpan Dead?

mhv said:

Aw, Scott, I fear you're deadbeating a deadhorse! We all know that the Aral sea salts are even more deadly than the Dead Sea ones.

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I guess then it would put you in a bit of a pickle to stop this verbal assault on the deadpan aesthetic. A brine time is being had by all, even the seasoned veterans. But I'm not licked yet - it's just an open wound crying out for criminal charges of buttery. Truly tearful, don't you think?

TheFlyingCamera said:

I guess then it would put you in a bit of a pickle to stop this verbal assault on the deadpan aesthetic. A brine time is being had by all, even the seasoned veterans. But I'm not licked yet - it's just an open wound crying out for criminal charges of buttery. Truly tearful, don't you think?

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Ouch! Now we killed the thread too...

For me the question isn't smile or not smile or expression or not expression, the question is real or not real. It is necessary to have intuition or perception when you are looking/watching someone you are trying to photograph. You don't want to pose them, as that is fake. You don't want to make them smile as that is fake as well. If the person is uncomfortable and is bent on forced smiling then I tell them to just completely relax and don't worry about smiling. Or take a couple shots of forced smiles and tell them great you have great smile shots now lets do some without smiling so much. I think that is where deadpan comes from. Being a photographer unable to find an honest look from a person except by the process of elimination, stopping this fake look and that tense uncomfortable look and that look of fear ... just sit there and don't make any look. At least that is a struggle with studio portraits. There sit up on the stool in front of that background under that light with me aiming an enormous camera at you and give me something I can trust is you.
dp

The goal of any portrait is to be expressive, and describe the person's personality. A deadpan portrait doesn't really express anything, does it? The idea behind Soth's work is interesting, but I find the portraits uninspiring. What do those portraits say about the people in them? Avedon has been blamed above for the popularity of the deadpan portrait, but Avedon's portraits were anything but dead. Look at most of the work mentioned and you can see what dead really is. The people just look bored, like there is nothing going on inside their heads.

Patrick

I think the deadpan look, especially as practiced by Alec Soth, is a tool to engendering false empathy from the viewer. Especially when you read the stories associated with the people he photographs - they have absolutely horrid, tragic lives, and here they are looking at you with this vacuous, ennervated expression, which gives the appearance of magnifying their tragedy tenfold. It makes you see them as victims, when in many cases they are anything but.

TheFlyingCamera said:

It makes you see them as victims, when in many cases they are anything but.

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Dear Scott,

Yes, but surely victimhood is the ambition of a surprising number of people: "I have far too much money, but I haven't got what I want. Therefore I am a victim"

It does not occur to them to meditate upon the old saying 'Money can't buy you happiness' -- though as Nanny Ogg said, "I didn't want to buy it, just rent it for a while."

Cheers,

R.

i was going to write something here, but realized ...

thanks bjorke!

TheFlyingCamera said:

I think the deadpan look, especially as practiced by Alec Soth, is a tool to engendering false empathy from the viewer. Especially when you read the stories associated with the people he photographs - they have absolutely horrid, tragic lives, and here they are looking at you with this vacuous, ennervated expression, which gives the appearance of magnifying their tragedy tenfold. It makes you see them as victims, when in many cases they are anything but.

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Timely that you should say that, yesterday I was at Concordia U for the talk on photo, and in the hall of a building they had an exhibition of photographs. the people were Cambodians who lost limbs because of landmines.

The portraits were taken with 4x5 polaroid, with visible peel borders, on a white background, deadpan full-body. The prints were about 6 feet tall, printed on white canvas, and hanged from the ceiling. There was 16 prints, and they cut through the space of the hall diagonally.

You can have a look at some of them on the photographer's website here:
http://www.vtonyhauser.com/landmines.htm

It did not move me. Was it because of the combined clichés (polaroid, white bckgnd, deadpan, etc)? Perhaps.

Here's a quote from the artist about the photos: "I purposely chose to isolate [these people] from their natural surroundings. I hoped this would elevate them and, at the same time, reveal my admiration for their strength. They live with the daily fear of land mines."

To me it felt like a butterfly collection: "hey, let's take 16 people who lived through horror and pin them into my retrograde aesthetics so that people can see how sensitive I am, oups! I mean, how important the issue of landmines is." I don't see how the white background elevates them. How about putting some angel wings at their backs, while we're there? That will elevate them eh?

I don't see the imagination, the research, the originality, nor do I see there the suffering, courage, and daily fear. What I see is a photographer slumming, reaping the harvest of horror around the world to polish his status. I don't see the compassion, the empathy (or the sympathy, whatever it is).

I saw it, on the other hand, in the sculptures of Marc Quinn. At the DHC/Art gallery in Old Montréal, there is a retrospective of his work, and his greco-roman-like sculptures of people with missing limbs, like Alison Lapper, hit the spot. Here's a photo of it: Dead Link Removed

I choose this one because I saw it recently, but also because Quinn approaches a subject with missing limbs, like Hauser does. There is a profound difference. Quinn is using the conventions of greco-roman sculptures, whom we are used to see with missing limbs, but instead of depicting people possessing them all, he specifically chose people who are really missing them.

What it creates is a dissonance between the ideal of beauty we associate with classical sculptures and the reality of bodies. For some reason, few people like to think of people missing limbs as beautiful, but a sculpture lacking them can be. Quinn proposes that this is hypocritical, and he shows true admiration for his subjects by sculpting them. And they ARE beautiful sculptures, some of which showing embraces, mother and child, people doing physical activity, etc.

It's the click of imagination that's missing in Hauser. Quinn is clever with his art historical reference, but he thinks of something new for his subject, he works out a particular treatment that chimes with his subject.

Hauser on the other hand gives monotone, ponderous pictures of people who are anything but. His intent, according to his website, is "to confront younger viewers with the devastating consequences of land mines around the world." How is that confrontational?

If you really want to confront people with the horrible reality of land mines, send them to Cambodia and have them see exactly how many people over there are missing hands, feet, arms, legs, parts of faces, etc. If this photographer really wanted to make a statement photographically on this subject, he should have shown the people in their daily environment, trying to do the things they have to do to survive, and how it impacts their day-to-day activities. You CAN'T abstract something like landmines, which are basically an already abstract notion to begin with for anyone who hasn't dealt with the consequences already.

I'm tired of the dead pan look, I see it not just in porrait but in landscape as well. It used to be that photography was about finding that special moment, be it in a fleeting expression of a person or a special moment in nature. But finding those special moments takes too much time, too much effort and few nowadays seem to be willing to work hard at it.

How many more line em up shoot em up portraits on white do we need? I am amazed more by the reactions of the viewers than the photos themselves. How many boring emotionless dead pan portraits have been posted on APUG with comments from viewers about how much emotion they have? Does the audience have that strong a need to project their own feelings and emotions onto the subjects? What happened to the notion that the photographer is trying to express something, not just put up a blank canvas for the audience to toss their own paint on and then call his own.

Brian-

I think you've hit the nail on the head there- the appeal of deadpan is to the audience as much if not more than to the photographer. In this day of personalized this that and the other, and interactive everything, why not have your art be your own, even though it's someone else's art? People want something totally plastic so they can see in it what they want, and identify with it.

I read through this thread during lunch yesterday with interest. On the way home I happened to be bringing my children to the local library and as is my habit I wandered over to the photography section, not expecting to see anything new. Much to my delight there on the shelf was Henri Cartier-Bresson's "Tête à tête" so I took it home and enjoyed going through it with a coffee in hand and this thread kept coming to mind.

Wonderful portraits, with expressions. I'll freely admit to being a fan of HCB's work but I think if anyone was to look at the portraits in the book that they couldn't possibly say that they would be better with a Deadpan look.

I wonder if proponents of the deadpan look, condone the use of smilies

My 2c worth,

David

I think the most interesting portraits are somewhere between the outright smile and the complete deadpan (which should give quite a range of possibilities!)

Deadpan has, or had a place, and I think was taken up for interesting reasons, but has become such a fashion that it's a parody of itself.

I'm not sure I see it as 'for' the audience so much (or the sitter) as for the photographer. It's more about the photographer's approach than anything else.

p.s.Michel - I love that sculpture of Alison Lapper. It has so much to say, and manages to do so without overstatement. From what I've read it was very much a collaborative process between the two of them.

If any of you happen to be in the Twin Cities, go to IFP over on University and see the Double Entendre show up right now. It's a fascinating contrast between two MCAD grads who both do the deadpan look, but in very different ways.

There is Deadpan, and there is Deadpan.....

It seems to me that the Deadpan look can take a number of forms.

Sometimes a portrait that features a "Deadpan" expression features a number of other advantage as well.

Correct me if I am wrong but a large number of prifti's photographs might be considered "Deadpan":

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

These I find very interesting.

Matt

http://aphotoeditor.com/2007/10/24/smiling-happy-people/

possibly of interest

I think there's a difference between serious, reflective, off-guard, and all the expressions that would be NOT a smile, (though I'm not saying a smile is wrong, at all, I very much like the shot of Mick Jagger with a broad smile by Jane Bown, and many others - the key is the smile doesn't seem forced, or just 'for the camera') and "deadpan" which to me means not only not-smiling but emptied of expression (most like a mug-shot) so even the eyes reveal nothing, and also refers to the style - full frontal head and shoulders or full body, if in black and white shot with a white background, if in colour often with a more natural surrounding, always with eye contact although the eyes seek to give nothing away.

Interesting article today in the Boston Globe about the Deadpan expression that seems so common in today's photography...

http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2007/11/04/heres_looking_at_you/

Ian Grant said:

Hasn't that Azo guy, been exhibiting deadpan Large Format colour images of Prison inmates. Michael A. Smith

Ian

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Michael Smith is from Tulsa. Finally someone from Tulsa is mentioned on this Forum. I seem to be the lone poster or at least the only one who admits to being in Tulsa. Somewhat off topic I guess but then again I can't think of anyone who would be smiling in prison. However I get your point Michel.

SuzanneR said:

Interesting article today in the Boston Globe about the Deadpan expression that seems so common in today's photography...

http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2007/11/04/heres_looking_at_you/

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Very good article, I like that it ends with a lot of questions rather than just an encomiac envoy about its subject. A little bit of market cynicism does not hurt as well: "It doesn't hurt that it sells. As Toale says, 'It's become popular because it's become popular.'"

There's also an interesting reflection on Sander:
"Arlette Kayafas, who runs the photography-focused Gallery Kayafas, finds recent deadpan photography intriguing but sees a difference between it and Sander's art. 'Even though [Sander's subjects] weren't smiling, there wasn't this blank stare on the faces. There was this dignified pose,' she says. 'There's much more of an emotional presence to them.' Stover argues that what some see as more emotion in the earlier work, like Sander's, is actually nostalgia - that when they were made, they appeared as blunt as deadpan photos feel now."

SuzanneR said:

Interesting article today in the Boston Globe about the Deadpan expression that seems so common in today's photography...

http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2007/11/04/heres_looking_at_you/

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The photographer is using an "old-fashioned medium format camera"...?

You mean... one that uses film?

In the Harper's this month, there is a newly recovered text by W.H. Auden about poetry and criticism. What he says about free verse, I think, applies also to deadpan:

The poet who writes "free verse" is like Robinson Crusoe on his island: he must do all his cooking, laundry, darning, etc. In a few exceptional case, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor: empty bottles on the unswept floor, dirty sheets on the unmade bed.

its been almost 6 years since this thread was started ...
and it is as relevant today as it was 5 years 11 months ago

( i love this series: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nelsonfoto/2374236656/in/set-72157604123142870/ )

jnanian said:

its been almost 6 years since this thread was started ...
and it is as relevant today as it was 5 years 11 months ago

( i love this series: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nelsonfoto/2374236656/in/set-72157604123142870/ )

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I'd say that only some of those are really "deadpan". I'm not terribly fond of the series - I don't like the photographer's lighting style. On a separate but not entirely unrelated note, flipping through that gallery on Flickr was particularly jarring because of the ads inserted every five or six images, because the ads were so stylistically different from the photos in the series.

jovo said:

My dad did LF portraits way back when. He found it enormously challenging and worked very hard at making them vivid and alive. He fully exploited the pre-focused and composed set-up that allowed him to engage the sitter, and expose a sheet of film at the moment that he regarded as revealing. I wonder if 'deadpan' is a cop-out that bypasses the challenge of finding a decisive moment in favor of an easy to accomplish portrait that's on a par with photographing a well illuminated rock, root, and tree.....and I'm a big fan of rocks and trees!

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I always wait for the tree to smile back at me.