Does a Portrait Need a Face?
David Bate has a good definition of a portrait’s elements:
A face
A pose
Clothing, or lack of clothing
Location/setting
A traditional portrait of a dancer includes a face (often featuring a blank or neutral expression), a pose (sometimes a fleeting pose in mid-movement), usually clothing (some dance genres have an associated style or costume), and a setting (in traditional promo shots, usually a plain background or a stage setting similar to that used for performance).
Would lessening or removing these elements emphasise those that remain? To test the idea, I produced a series of images that:
omit light from the subject
omit the face
limit the setting to a plain backdrop
limit the colours to those typically used in stage lighting
By not including a face, there are no associations that go with a face, such as emotions, character, attraction, or repulsion. By omitting light from the performer or lessening emphasis on costume, there is less emphasis on clothing. By not including a setting and only using one colour for the backdrop, only the associations raised by that colour remain. After that, all that remains is a pose.
Dance is all about pose, form, shape, movement, and rhythm. Still photography is especially good at portraying the first three. What might we notice when the pose is emphasised? Perhaps the fundamentals of a given performance genre. Or the work that went into making the body into that shape. Maybe the intention behind a shape.
Most of us, if asked to extend a leg and an arm exactly parallel to each other, couldn’t do it. Someone who practiced that for years could. A photograph that shows the leg and arm exactly parallel to each other, something that might happen too quickly to remember in a live performance, might tell us something about the fleeting nature of performance, or the work that went into it, or the difficulty behind certain kinds of beauty or expression, or whether beauty is intrinsic or symbolic. Perceptions will vary. The point is that without a face, we might still learn something, something different than what we expect.
