Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011

This exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery was a particularly unique opportunity to see sixty works by some of the most exciting contemporary portrait photographers from around the world. Most portraits successfully captured unique aspects of their subjects.  However, I was particularly drawn to the portrait 'Of Lili' by Jill Wooster because I immediately saw the direct connection between Egon Schiele's androgynous self-portraits and the ambiguous portrait of sexuality and identity embodied by Lili, the subject of the portrait. Wooster herself explains the portrait:

'Lili is a complicated character. I like the way her androgyny makes her appearance seem both guarded and relaxed at the same time, capturing both her confidence and vulnerability.’

Like Schiele's 1910 self-portrait 'Seated Male Nude', 'Of Lili' presents an androgynous character, whose body is somewhat in conflict with her mentality and her biological identity. In 'Seated Male Nude', Schiele explores this conflict through his own body; his torso and legs and slim and feminine and it almost appears as if he has breasts. Yet the viewer's eye is immediatley drawn to the centre of the nude figure, where Schiele uses colours of deep red to explicitly depict his gentiles. In order to translate this apparent conflict between true biological identity and perceived identity, I used light in my own photos as a way of visually 'exposing' certain facial features and aspects of my subjects, while leaving other areas of face and body in the dark. 

The portrait 'Malega, Surma Boy, Ethiopia April 2011' by Mario Marini similarly attracted my attention, however, unlike Wooster's portrait, I was drawn to the colour composition of the portrait. The image depicts a young Ethiopian boy in centre focus,; his body language is guarded and his facial expression suggests suspicion and vulnerability. Yet it is the visual impact of his textured orange cloth worn on his black skin, almost purple it is so dark, that most caught my attention. This juxtaposition between colours is heightened by the background, which is almost the same colour as the young boys skin, creating the illusion that the boys face and upper torso is in camouflage. While this portrait does not directly relate to any artist I have previously looked at, I again sought to replicate the use of lighting in my own set of portraits. The dark tones in the bottom two photographs contrast are rich and successfully obscure the face the subjects in the bottom two portraits. In the self-portrait, while the skin tones of my face contrast with the grey-blue background, there is a shadow of purple-blue in the darker areas of my face and my right eye is a dark blue, which picks up on the background colour. 

Overall, I enjoyed the exhibition and feel that I have been able to successfully exploit it as a bridge between artists of the 19th century such as Schiele, Kimt and Toulouse-Lautrec and contemporary artists. Furthermore, through looking at photographic portraits, I have widened my artistic outlook and have given myself more flexibility in terms of where and how to direct my project.