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ON VIEW
About Face
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EXHIBITION
Studio, Street, Self: Photographic Portraits from The Historic New Orleans Collection
Through February 28, 2015
Boyd Cruise Gallery, 410 Chartres Street
Free
Whether the purpose was documentary or expressive, capturing a human likeness with the camera has been a longstanding role of photography. A portrait is a collaboration between subject and photographer, one modulated by the circumstances of the setting. Each variable helps to shape the final product, giving even the most similar-looking portraits a humanity as individual as their subjects. Studio, Street, Self: Photographu Portraits from The Historic New Orleans Collection, now on view at the Williams Research Center’s Boyd Cruise Gallery in conjunction with the citywide photography festival PhocoNOLA, offers an expansive view of portrait photography as it has existed in New Orleans and its environs for more than 175 years.
The exhibition includes photographs made both in formal studio settings and out in the street, as well as self-portraits. A photographer’s studio offers the greatest control over the setting and was a mainstay of early photographic practice, especially once more refined lenses and chemistry afforded an exposure time that did not exceed the sitter’s ability to stay still. The early studios’ posing chairs, props, and skylights later yielded to seamless backgrounds and an arsenal of specialized lighting equipment.
Street settings add an element of chance, from serendipitous juxtapositions of subject and background to effects of light and shadow. In street photographs, the skills of the artist intersect with surroundings that are presented rather than wholly selected. Self-portraits are a different breed of photographic portrait, embodying an implicit process of introspection—and perhaps an element of vanity. Such portraits often literally hold a mirror up to the subject, sometimes incorporating partially transparent or distorted reflections. Many
2 The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly