Experiment: each photographer was given a different story about the
person coming in for a portrait. Results varied widely when told the
subject was fisherman, self-made millionaire, parolee, beach lifeguard,
psychic, and so on.
- six different backstories led 6 photographers to make differing portraits
Perhaps
the same contextual framing and predisposition affects documentary
projects, archival work, ethnographic field studies, or transposing a
biographical sketch from one language to another for readers of a
different culture or era. In other words, if the lens can stand for a
perceptual grasp of a subject, then the same assumptions that these
photographers baked into their choice of composition and lighting and
shutter release also may reveal how one goes about engaging with the
world in general: we prejudge people and settings, we view the world as
half-empty instead of half-full, for example; or at the time of middle
age we feel that so many opportunities remain, rather than feeling that
so few days are left before extinction.
And while this portrait
experiment misled the photographers who were doing their very best
creative work to interpret the man, based on the sparse backstory
provided, the end result of this decoy experiment powerfully
demonstrates to journalists, archaeologists and other scientists
(predisposed with the working theories or hypotheses they bake into
their research design and deployment of available methods), philosophers
and novelists, as well as social observers of all stripes that
assumptions and prior knowledge frame one's boundaries and the placement of one's subject within that context.
By extension
the frame we paint for our selves
(presentation of self; self-image; concept of self) is colored by the
assumptions we adopt, discover, aspire to, or have been given by others
we know and have been labeled by society more generally.
see the experiment,
https://youtu.be/F-TyPfYMDK8 or jump to the
time mark showing the resulting portraits
Blurb:
A photograph is shaped more by the person behind the camera than by what's in front of it. To
prove this we invited six photographers to a portrait session with a
twist. ‘Decoy’ is one of six experiments from The Lab, designed to shift
creative thinking behind the lens. [November 2015]
