Jacinda Russell (Website), MFA from University of Arizona, showed work from a series she called “Left With My Own Device.” She told me that her photographs, portraits with 19th century headclamps of people holding objects, were somewhat inspired by the torture and prison photographs featured in the media in august 2005. I’m not sure if I see the reference (or need it) but I thought there was something interesting going on here (besides the hilarious first look laugh of the clamps).
I asked her about the objects and Jacinda fleshed out their purpose: the “people become a prop for the object” and she had discovered that the images had more impact the less the person interacted with the viewer. This was right on the money – looking through her portfolio, I felt that every image with eye contact wasn’t anywhere near as interesting as these two, where the people are practically pedestals.
The origin of the object isn’t too important to me (Jacinda says she asked her subjects to bring something important to them, and she brought something important to her – photographing people with an object important to them is a pretty common practice). It’s this power the object has over an image that I’m interested in – the idea of the “prop” switching roles with the “subject,” something that happens so often unintended in vernacular portrait photography.
In fact, after its initial joke value, I’m not sure the head clamp adds much by being in all the images. It made me laugh and got me looking and questioning, but became tedious after viewing multiple images featuring it. My advice at this point would be to keep these two and maybe a couple other favorites (such as a hair one she showed me) and continue investigating the power of the prop and its place in portrait photography.
The lighting and background choices, though perhaps unintentionally visually linked with more amateurish studio images, actually work for me, but again only in small doses. I’m not sure I need an entire series shot in this manner. I feel a lot of portfolios suffer from this. They start with a good idea, but it seems that the photographer worries that they need to keep their technical approach to the subject matter from varying image to image.
Unless the work is to be presented in a grid or something similar, I think that creating a variety of investigations into a concept often results in more interesting work. Obviously, tackling each approach multiple times will result in a higher chance of one or two great images, but when showing the portfolio too many similar shots often water down the direct impact of the work.
Anyway, I hope that helps Jacinda – I really enjoyed looking at her work and talking with her and I’m excited to see where she might go with it.