The aim of portraits has always been to show a visual representation of an individual’s intensity and complexity, stopping time at a specific moment. In the long evolution of art, portraits have always offered images which are filtered by artists’ qualities and interpreted by observers according to their sensitivity. Photography needs no longer than a second to capture what used to take painters and sculptors endless work sessions. Twentieth century art goes beyond the idea of portraits being true-to-life. Plain documental aspects is no longer enough and emotivity and interpretation are broadly welcome. In addition, the spreading of psychology studies makes it clear that portraitmaking is closely linked to artists’ inner lives and models’ faces are just a Narcissus pond for artists to seek themselves. On the one hand, photography makes it easier to produce a portrait, but, on the other, this action is now more complex, as it is filtered by the lens of a machine.

One of the greatest contemporary portraitists, Richard Avedon, writes in the introduction to his In the American West “A portrait photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture. The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered in someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about. My concerns are not his. We have separate ambitions for the image. His need to plead his case probably goes as deep as my need to plead mine, but the control is with me”. What is then the main success factor for a portrait photograph? Surely, the astonishment the author can convey to observers, who will read a character’s whole story in a single image. Marilyn Monroe, certainly one of the 20th century’s most photographed women, “can paint the image within the camera”, said David Conover. No doubt the best portraits of the diva are those that show her tormented inner side, which only great photographers like Richard Avedon and Bert Stern were able to capture. In the portrait by Stern, Marilyn, enveloped in a Dior dress, is just a back silhouette, her face bent, barely recognisable, nothing to do with the young and cheeky sex-symbol diva. Stern showed Marilyn’s undisputed charm together with a hint of sensuality and melancholic femininity, which make this actress a timeless icon. We may also be surprised by a harsh and straightforward picture, like Marlon Brando’s portrait by Mary Ellen Mark, which was taken during the shooting of the film Apocalypse Now. The actor’s magnetic eyes are staring at onlookers, who cannot help reacting in disgust when they notice a black insect on the actor’s shaved head: a clear symbol of the dramatic character of this film. In a good portrait, subjects’ faces may also be hidden or not visible, but their personalities are highlighted by other details the observer is invited to discover. Art is renewed, transformed and artmaking takes a new appearance and goes beyond the previously-marked borders. Lucio Fontana is an undisputed master of Spatialism, an art form based on gestures defining and constructing space. Photography can help artists freeze a gesture, the space of a familiar time dimension.

Ugo Mulas had a full understanding of the complexity of the art world in the Seventies, which he could interpret from a privileged position, as he lived together with artists and shared their thought. In the series of pictures showing Fontana’s cuts, his face is always hidden in the background, whilst his hand is at the centre of all images: the true interpreter of art-making. Talking about the importance of details at the expense of faces in many of the best-known portraits in the history of photography, the picture by Cornell Capa “showing” John Kennedy is worth mentioning. Cornell, less famous than the heroic reporter Robert, followed Kennedy’s presidential campaign and portrayed him surrounded by the crowd. But the picture which made this author famous shows the dark presidential chair covering almost all the visual field and just a little window on the table piled with objects. We know it is Kennedy thanks to the little label on the chair and a wisp of hair contrasting against the light colour of the wall. This photo gives us a sense of isolation and loneliness of a man who would be killed shortly after. The chair becomes a symbolic coffin. The photographer’s visual intelligence is conveyed by his ability to rapidly capture the essence of his subject, turning at times to secondary elements, but always using the lens to filter his sensitiveness.

By Silvia Berselli