PORTRAITS D’ACTION
It’s difficult to shoot a portrait without staging it, even when it’s an “action portrait.” And so, whether sessile or unsettled, a number of photos in the HUMANITAS section may appear to violate my declared dogma (”My aesthetic is simple: I make no bones about manipulating exposures or the physical camera, but whatever shows up in my viewfinder is what I present.”) The problem is this: humans tend to either mug for the camera or shun the camera once they’re aware of it; thus, the photographer is forced to react to their reaction. The purest photos in this series are of my daughter, Bella, sitting on a barstool (row 5, right), and my niece, Sophie (rows 14 and 15), running pell-mell around her bedroom with some friends. The most managed pic is the trio in row one, shot at the Dresden in L.A., where all the subjects were moving in a proscribed fashion to help me create the desired illusion of transparency. This ghosting effect is achieved by keeping the shutter open for at least 15 seconds and generally occurs when the subject or camera is in motion.
