The Gesture: Five Cartes de Visite

I have been thinking lately about the elements of successful portraiture in an art photography context. One of the most important elements I think is what we might call the gesture - the tilt of a head, the focusing of the eyes, the placement of the lips, posture, the implication of movement, and so on. These give the viewer the means to interpret the image.

What makes the portraits of Thomas Ruff (Google image search "thomas ruff" portrait to see some of these), whose name has come up a few times in class recently, so compelling is exactly the absence of the gesture in the photograph. This makes the job of reading the portraits - as representations of particular human subjects - very difficult. I won't go into the implications of Ruff's work here, but I thought I would instead show some examples of the gesture in action.

First, a selection of lovely cartes de visite I found recently, in which the sitters' heads are floating in an expansive empty frame.

Carte de Visite, n.d. (Photographer Unknown)

Carte de Visite, n.d.
J.S. Mayer, Photographer, 349 Canal Street, N.Y.

Carte de Visite, n.d.
E. Couchman, Photographer, No 45 South Pearl Street, Albany, N.Y.

Carte de Visite, n.d.
J.H. Abbott, No. 480 Broadway, Albany, N.Y.

Carte de Visite, n.d.
Mills & Son, Photographers, Penn Yan, N.Y.

What's great about images that have floated completely free of their makers and original owners like these is that we are unencumbered in our readings of them. Left with their facial gestures, isolated from the rest of their bodies, we can imagine as much, or as little, as we please.