I've been reading a book on the history of photography recently and the section on Portraiture that I'm reading at the moment is fascinating.
One thing which stood out clearly was that the portraits of men mostly had them staring into the camera and effectively at the viewer of the photograph. Most of the portraits of women had them staring off to the side.
So why would that be then? I think there are two important factors. Firstly, a direct stare can be considered confrontational and women tend to be less confrontational than men. Secondly, there is the long-standing attitude that women are objects of beauty to be appreciated: she is to be stared at and so shouldn't stare back. This necessarily makes the female subjects more passive, fitting in with the "larger, passive, female ideal based on assumed sexual difference and social significance". The female images are to be consumed (by men). This has the effect of depersonalizing the female images so that they are more about a "spiritual ideal than a physical presence", individuality is reduced.
The thing that stood out most though, was how much can be read into a portrait. Every tiny detail has significance when it's rendered into a photograph and inspected, a significance that would probably be absent without the photograph. This is because a photograph freezes a moment of time and allows us to look at it closely in ways that are far more difficult in real life. A fleeting expression, the positioning of the fingers, a slight curve of the neck, can all be minutely examined for meaning. Everything in the frame is there because the photographer wanted it to be there, and those things can also be examined for meaning. It is to be hoped that all this meaning illuminates something of the subject's character, their inner being.
I'm taking far, far fewer photographs now that I'm thinking more about them rather than just snapping hundreds and hoping for a good one. But are my pictures any better for this? Well, honestly, not much, but I think that is starting to change.
Cheers, Tom.