01
Words.
Portrait.
Let us start with the meaning of the word portrait. Words of speech are "Shaw, bone and flesh alike", meaning that the bones are similar; "like, seemingly", derived from the word "like". Originally rare in ancient elephants, one can only imagine their image on the basis of images of elephants, which are then quoted in words. Then the word "like" was born, sharing the word "imaginative" contained in "like".
Oracle's Shaw.
The term image in English is derived from imago in Latin and is meant to be the wax mold of the face of the deceased. Images are born in ancient tombs, which live by death, with the painting of caves, the burial of statues, the sculpture of the dead... The "like" is the continuation of the dead. It brings together the good side of the living, is full of energy and rejects nothing.
The Latin iago has the meaning of insect.
02
Reproduction
As a replica, the original function of a "portrait" is to allow the presence of absentee. From the ceremonial objects of the ancestors to the icons of religion, the portrait paints a similarity of the absent entity that exists only in imagination. The dead are dead, God is built on faith, and portraits, as a symbol of spiritual trust, carry the remembrance of eternal and indelible divine will.
After the medieval century, the theme of portraits gradually shifted from religious subjects such as the Holy Family and the Apostles to the royal nobility. The portraits began to evolve into a hard demand: the nobles had to have a portrait of themselves, which became a symbol of identity and power. Above the dead, glory longs for eternal life.
Since the seventeenth century, the rise of rich landowners and middle-class businessmen has raised a large number of portraitists. As a permanent visual record of personal wealth and family life, portraits have become a reality book, and it is worth noting that a considerable proportion of the imagination is involved. For example, Rembrandt's "Night Patrol" staged dramatic conflict, which is largely the product of the artist's fiction.
Night Patrol, 1642.
03
Real or spiritual?
It's not as if Shaw was a vexation of reality, it's rather an ideal product that looks at the essence of "humans". It seeks to present the entire spiritual nature of a person, not just the superficial features.
Jean Luc Nancy.
The portrait... is objet petit a portrait of a person that is re-emerging himself... and is, strictly speaking, an absolute subject: the subject that separates from everything else that is not him, the subject that withdraws from everything external."
Jean Luc Nancy, "The look of portraits"
04
Photography intrusion
It's a D'Angel photo.
The invention of photography robbed professional portrait painters of their jobs. In 1839, Dagerr, the chief framer of a famous opera in Paris, France, invented the method of making visible the exposure of silver salt using mercury vapour, historically known as the "Dagaer Silver version". This method is exposed for approximately 30 minutes, and each photograph is unique and cannot be replicated. From now on, photography can store people forever in a thin film. This magic of capturing reality has shocked the world, and portraits are faster and more authentic than portraits.
05
"Light"
In early photography, the camera recorded time rather than moment. The target sits in front of the camera for a while, in a relatively static position, unable to speak, and breathing calmly -- During this period, all his activity will be recorded in photographs, consistent with top-level portraits seeking to depict "the whole spiritual nature of a human being", and early portraits still contain what Benjamin called "the light". Because it takes time and effort to gaze, the subject's "god" is gathered in the photograph.
Photos of Kafka in "The Age of the Spirit."
06
Quick!
In 1888, with the slogan "You just press the button, the rest of us do", the founder of Koda, George Eastman, who invented the world's first automatic camera, sent it into the everyday lives of ordinary people. With the popularization of popular photography, it has evolved from special rituals to daily activities, and the spread of mapping capacity has reduced the energy of portraits.
Photos have become easier and faster, and the desire of everyone to retain their images has led to a dramatic increase in the number of photographs. Even before you blinked, your portrait was captured. But don't forget the resemblance and imagination of portraits. From film heat, to digital cameras and one-sided sequences, to mobile photography today, what are we doing in the camera?
07
Digitalism
As photography moves unswervingly towards commercialization and service, we are increasingly eager to see our most satisfying image in the picture - an ideological, social-linguistic edifice. Perfect is the absence of flaw, and personality corresponds to a fixed physical position. Photoshop and the camera went the same way, and in the drawings we yearned for ourselves to be struck into a symmetrical face.
We live in imagination and just want to see what we want to see.
08
What's a portrait?
What exactly do we do with our portraits today? To answer that question, perhaps we should ask ourselves how we intend to treat ourselves.
Face a portrait of a true self, face a true self. As an open window, Real Image wants to provide each participant with an opportunity to move towards himself. At the same time, we are trying to answer the question of what is a good portrait.
Every Real Image shoot is a long fermentation process. We recorded the time in the film to the greatest extent possible: the story of the person who was filmed, the marks of his face, the time he passed through in the wrinkles, the fact that he was present at the scene, his interaction with the photographer, his hysteria, and his presence, could be seen in the portrait without being erased from the software.
Real Image's portrait is not a fast-forward. It is not a picture in the modern sense, it is not a picture of a violent bombing in an advertising light box, shop window. Each Real Image portrait is to be read in a long interactive view. Only in constant amplification and questioning can the wealth of information contained in the portrait be released and deciphered.
Go on, leave a portrait.
I can say at this moment
Stop, you're beautiful!
The traces of my life will not sink into nothing.
Gold. - Faust.
The good people are watching.