Emotions Through the Lens

Bethany Palmer

Abstract:
Portrait photography is a visual representation of a person and can showcase various emotions. Many forms of portraiture are posed and subjects are often directed on the kinds of emotions to portray. In search of capturing pure, genuine human emotion, this portfolio of portraits uses a simple set up and framing technique to strip the resulting photographs of every form of emotional context apart from the subjects and their expressions. To do this, each subject was instructed to sit in front of a plain black background and face the camera. The use of a 4x5 large format camera helped to facilitate a calm, more thoughtful environment for composing the photographs due to the personal and intricate nature of this method of single-shot, analog photography. Once the camera was positioned to have the subject in the middle of the frame, the subject was instructed to calm their mind and face and to look into the camera without thinking about any particular emotion to be expressing. Then, when the subject was ready, the photograph was taken and the film was later processed to create the prints in the portfolio.