LIFE-SIZE: 8x10 PORTRAITS

In the mid 1970’s I took a master class in portraiture, taught by the great Philippe Halsman. I had never had much interest in photographing people, as I thought that the portrait was a bit of a cop-out: the human face is always fascinating to look at.

The 8x10 portraits began as a homework assignment for this class. I decided to make them life-size - or 1:1 - because photography is a very literal medium, it “copies”, literally, what is in front of the lens, so shooting 1:1 seemed appropriate. Thus these portraits are in fact contact prints, from 8x10 inch film.

Around this time, a colleague of mine shot at least a dozen images of me and chose one to show, one I happened to think was not strong. Nor was it particularly revealing or even flattering. Shooting architecture professionally, I was used to an opposite process: first choosing the strongest view and then making that photograph. Dissatisfied as I was with my colleague’s portrayal of me, I wanted to see if this process could be applied beyond buildings, to people. I saw portraits as ultimately representing a “slice of time,” and I wanted to choose my “slice” at the time, at the moment of shooting, rather than from an array of various “slices” on a proof sheet afterwards. So I tried this approach, and I liked the result. There are no “out-takes.” What you see is the only portrait of that person that I made.

It was only after I had shot many of these portraits that I discovered their incredible intimacy. In life, one is forbidden to study another person’s face “up close and personal” without a relationship to match, but these photographs break through those social boundaries.

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FULL-LENGTH PORTRAITS OF NATIVE AMERICANS