New Faces of the Collection
New Faces of the Collection features 27 photographs that celebrate a range of themes, styles, and approaches to the contemporary portrait while exploring the introspective nature of portraiture. Through September 18 at Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
American Essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes hailed photography as “the mirror with a memory.” Certainly, portrait photography presents us with a mirrored likeness. Yet portraits reveal more than the physiognomy of the sitter; like a mirror, they invite us to reflect on ourselves. Rather than presenting the viewer with the facts about a person, these portraits provoke inquiry and engage the viewer in a dialogue. What can we learn from a portrait? What do we read into a portrait?
No series evokes these questions as poignantly as Grant Mudford’s unique assemblage of gelatin silver prints. Mudford’s larger-than-life works, made in the late 1980s, offer an unvarnished look at the Southern California artists who were his friends. Like passport photographs, with the subject placed against a white background and in harsh light, they seem to reveal both everything and nothing. To create the 15 large-scale gelatin silver prints of the series, Mudford invited these Southern California artists to collaborate with him to create their portraits. The artist-subjects chose what they wore and presented themselves as they wished to be seen. For instance, Renée Petropoulos had just returned from a trip to Turkey and brought a Turkish wedding outfit to wear.
In spite of the unrelenting honesty that the camera reveals about the physical appearance of these artists, Mudford’s images urge the viewer to reconsider the deceptive nature of the photographic portrait. Mudford notes, “I think photography, at its most interesting, and at its best, is full of illusion and abstraction. That’s kind of what photographs do to things. They transform them into photographs. The photographs are no longer reality..”
In some cases, portrait photography can be deceptive; in other cases, it can be affirming. Roger Eberhard’s work compels us to look long and hard at the face of homelessness in Santa Barbara. While the tendency on the street is often to avert one’s gaze―whether from fear, disgust or shame―these images reveal some larger truths about our society and ourselves.
Framed In Good Light (from which the series takes its title) against a gray background, each person was given free rein to pose and offered the opportunity to include any props or significant others they desired. Cool and self-possessed, smiling broadly, or locked in an embrace, these participants were in control of the image they projected. Eberhard made a contract with and paid each of the participants. He spent a long time talking with his subjects in order to gain their trust, but the actual photo session lasted only five to ten minutes. At the end of the session, Eberhard gave a Polaroid print to each of his subjects and later he sent a larger print to each person who could supply an address.
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