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The special optical fidelity of the photograph, the ease with which it freezes motion, and the degree to which it can shorten the sitting meant that forced artists to ask once again what a portrait is. The customs surrounding the commission of painted portraits suggest that from the sitter's point of view, it was not mainly an art form. It was a means of exhibiting social importance, of freezing the years, and of participating in the continuity of family traditions. Portraits were traditionally the painter's bread and butter, yet once the artist became an artist instead of a craftsman, the sitters's view could become insulting. The painter usually solved his own status problem by either turning the portrait into an object of luxury or using it to demonstrate his ability to freeze life.
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As an object of ostentation and luxury, photography could not easily compete with painting. It's traditions were too weak, and it was not inherently expensive. So the photographer was left with capturing life. At first glance, the innate capabilities of the medium suit photography perfectly for the task. But it turns out not to be so: the physical capture of a single frame of time by the camera is different than the method traditionally used by the painter, who summarizes many distant frames to create the emotional impression of frozen time. The pose of the painting looks sustainable, while that of the snapshot obviously isn't. Photography tends to eliminate time by producing instantaneity, while painters try to eliminate time by creating eternity.
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Photography forced the photographer to choose a more casual attitude toward the portrait and the sitter, but the photographer then had to use the painter's techniques of handling time to get his results.
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