All great portrait photography negotiates a delicate balance between artifice and authenticity.  On the one hand, photography – by its definition as an artform – is tasked with the manipulation of reality.  Existence distilled into a single frame does not align with a healthy experience of life as a succession of past, present, and future events organized through an interpretation of cause and effect.  In fact, writers like Sharon Sliwinski have argued convincingly that the photograph – by freezing a moment in time – encapsulates a mode of perception characteristic of those dealing with post-traumatic stress.  In addition to the distortion of time, portrait photography often involves the manipulation of light, of posture and pose; the artifice of makeup; a lengthy post-production process that further removes the photograph from the subject it purports to capture.  Susan Sontag has famously argued that photography actively does violence to its subjects and “starts from not accepting the world as it looks.”

On the other hand, the most powerful images in a portrait (or fashion) photographer’s oeuvre can convey a truth so immediate that it transcends the usual logic of understanding.  Take, for example, Helmut Newton’s famous 1975 photograph of Vibeke Knudsen in a lamplit Rue Abriol.  The image helped to make Yves Saint Laurent’s smoking jacket an icon of 1970s fashion, but its resonance has less to do with fashion – I would argue – than with its emotional insight into the interdependency of romance and loneliness.  The closest modern articulation of this paradox might be Esther Perel’s definition of love as “a vessel that contains both security and adventure.”  The best photographers can flash on complexities of meaning that writers and psychologists labor to string into language.

The images in Peter Lindbergh’s last published book – Shadows on the Wall – epitomize this dynamic of truth through artifice that – for me – is the greatest challenge and fascination of portrait photography.  The actress Helen Mirren articulates the artistry involved in choreographing this dynamic when she speaks about posing for Lindbergh:  “It’s challenging and I really thought about it this morning coming to work: about who I am, at this very moment in time.  And how can I then show that in an honest and straightforward way to Peter’s camera.”  Mirren speaks with the performer’s appreciation of the distinction between truth and its communication to an audience.  Insofar as it needs to cross the chasm between one consciousness and another, truth is always mediated; always a performance at its origin and always an interpretation at its reception.  The fact that so many trusted Lindbergh’s camera to be the instrument of transmission between one and the other is perhaps his greatest achievement. 

An understanding of photography’s instrumental power, which seems instinctive to Mirren and the other actresses featured in Lindbergh’s book, does not come naturally to most models at the beginning of their careers, when standing before strobes in a studio is, at best, unnatural and at worst, petrifying.  Sometimes, looking through my lens at the frozen face of an inexperienced model, I’m put in mind of Sontag’s comparison of the camera to a gun – an accessory to what she calls “a soft murder.”  Having photographed many models at different stages of their careers, I’ve observed a common pattern in the evolution of their on-camera presence.  Models with more experience in front of the lens are able to cycle through a series of practiced poses and positions.  Models who have reached a certain level of comfort on set begin to pose with their facial expressions, and the most accomplished models are able to work in such a way that their movements are less poses than moments of self-revelation.  All of this is to say that – contrary to common assumption – modeling is extraordinarily difficult work.  The most powerful experiences I have had on set have been with models or subjects who are extraordinarily generous in giving something honest and authentic of themselves.  Great models are very like great actors in this practice of authenticity.  “To be a really good actor, let alone a great actor, you actually have to be yourself,” Hank Azaria said in a recent interview on NPR.  “You have to be willing to emotionally reveal yourself to people […] on stage or in front of the camera.”   The willingness on the part of a model to be vulnerable in front of a camera seems key to creating an image that carries resonance, and this vulnerability rests on a foundation of introspection, self-understanding, and courage.

Using the camera - an instrument of artifice - as a testament to authenticity depends even more heavily on the sensibility of the photographer, whose evolution can be much longer and more arduous than that of the model.  It is just as easy for photographers as for models to get carried away with pursuing the glossy perfection featured on ads and billboards in which models lack not only wrinkles, pimples, and cellulite but, quite often, pores.  The rebellion against such false perfection is one reason why Lindbergh has been so transformative to the photography world.  The power and impact of his photographs gave a generation of aspiring fashion photographers permission to seek something more honest and more powerful in their subjects.  “It should be the duty of every photographer working today to use his creativity and influence to free women and finally everyone from the fervor of youth and perfection,” Lindbergh wrote in his introduction to Shadows on the Wall.  “Whatever the definition of beauty might finally be – intimacy, empathy – such a wonderful word – trust and truth – it will be about emotion, and how you reflect your world, generosity, your own voice, and your very own sensibility and independence.  Here is a definition of beauty I can very much relate to: ‘You’re beautiful when you have the courage to be yourself.’”

Even with the fashion industry’s new emphasis on inclusion and diversity, the act of “being yourself” still requires significant courage.  We are surrounded daily by media that champions surface over substance and apps like FaceTune that facilitate self-disguise.  But in a world that is increasingly mediated by images, photographers can help to create spaces that allow for the unfolding of authenticity.  We can insist on the beauty of the accidental and the imperfect.  We must keep in mind that the camera can be a weapon of erasure or an instrument of revelation.  That the image can be a site of violence or of regeneration.