To her apparent surprise, most people showed little signs of self-love or overt narcissism. Instead, people often drifted into a meditative state that bordered on melancholy. Occasionally people cried. Sometimes, unprompted by Heyert, they undressed. Expressions changed from clownish to wary to wounded to confrontational in a matter of moments. Rarely, but sometimes, there were no easily discernible changes in expression for the entire 15 minutes. According to Heyert all the portraits seemed to emerge from the inner depths of each individual, with little similarity between the person she spoke to before the session and the personality she photographed through the mirror.Um. What?
I also like that she is one of the few photographers who I have seen who manages to play with detachment and irony without contempt. There's a real affection in all of these images, even as she brings the self-consciousness and awkwardness out. It's quite different from, say, Diane Arbus, who even though she did genuinely root for the folks she photographed, there's always that streak of cruelty that seems ready to come out.Arbus talked about capturing the flaw, the thing we try to hold back from the camera. Bathes called it "remaking ourselves in the pose." I do think Arbus sometimes used the camera both as a weapon and as a tool of affection, but she also developed strong relationships with her models in most cases. I don't get the same sense of photographer/model relationship in these images, but i do agree that they avoid the aggression that Arbus was capable of portraying.
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posted by klangklangston at 12:39 PM on September 29, 2008