Portraiture free essay sample

We read these components of the head and he face for mood, temperament and character in relation the ethnicity, sex and age, and for their attitude, including attitude towards the viewer. We can also understand something of the value of the face in photography by considering the close-up in cinema. Facial expressions signify a repertoire of states, indicating the potential mood of a person wearing them: anger, sadness, frustration, melancholy, etc. These conventions are articulated across different representational systems, like art, theatre, television, cinema and photography. The face as a close-up shot in such ractices thus serves several functions: it puts the viewer into an intimate position with the person seen; it shows the commodity and offers a point of psychological identification; and it gives things a value and mood. Obviously, different types of face by themselves can connote different things. Such logic depends on stereotypes, the typical features of signs. We will write a custom essay sample on Portraiture or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Stereotypes, like genres, help to organise our expectations about a character, so actors and actresses are often chosen to play parts where their face already signifies a basic set of social and personal characteristics, even before they act. Pose. The pose of sitters is itself a visual argument, a form of rhetoric. Whether the person in the picture is standing upright, slumped in a chair, thinking, has sternly folded arms or has them dangling loosely by their sides, such postures are read in combination. I t is the Job ot the portraitist to spot or direct these combinations, to understand what they signify together. A pose can be a self-consciously adopted manner intended to express a specific cultural identity, e. g. as goth, punk or business manager. Clothes. Clothing and the various accessories that go with it all contribute to the rhetoric of he portrait too. Clothes indicate a great deal about someones social identity and how they relate to it. A uniform, for example, makes it easy to distinguish a factory worker from a police officer, a nurse from a doctor. Although it is not a formal uniform, denim Jeans, invented in America, signify a casual dress code. They have become universal in value as a sign of equality and a democratic bisexual dress code. The body too is caught up in this rhetoric of clothing as difference. Which part of the body is covered or uncovered, clothes or unclothed is crucial in fashion. Roland Barthes argued that fashion is located in each gap of clothes, the parts of the body that are revealed by fashion clothing. Although we are not formally trained in the semiotics of clothing most people are practised in it. Even when someone says they do not care what clothes they wear, this still says something about them too. The well-worn stereotype of an English academic, the absent-minded professor type is someone who is focused on their work that they have no time or interest in other things, like their clothes. Yet strangely they do all seem to wear the same type of lothes: a dusty tweed Jacket and equally worn baggy trousers. Of course such images are stereotypes and not all academics are like this, but it shows that even functional and consciously non-fashion dress codes still signify too. There is no escape, it seems, from clothes having a meaning. Location/Setting. The setting or background behind the sitter, whether in a studio or an everyday exterior/interior location provides a context for the sitter. It quite literally locates the sitter within a social place and we Judge their position accordingly. In fashion hotography, editorial portraiture, family pictures, documentary or even a police mugshot, the perceived location is important. In cinema, advertising, fashion and even art photography, location scouting is crucial to finding places and spaces that will provide the right connection to the character in the picture. An urban back alley is the typical location for villains to be seen as villains. In fashion, a winter coat might look good against the same kind of urban space background, while a summer dress or bikini in that setting may seem rather too Vulnerable.