I put a link to my work for assignment five on the critiques forum on the oca-student site. I was initially disappointed that I did not receive any feedback, however, when Caroline, another I&P, student posted a reply it was definitely a case of quality not quantity.

Here is a link to Caroline’s response.

Caroline’s comment about not being able to tell something about someone’s personality from a single image reflects my own view that portraits are an unreliable tool when trying to understand a person’s personality. Whilst we can look at elements within the photograph such as background as context and other elements that we identify as signifiers; what a portrait is, is a likeness of a person at a moment in time. As a photographer I might choose to include elements within an image that may encourage the viewer to make assumptions about the subject, or alternatively, a viewer may have their own narrative that they project onto the subject of a portrait. Either way, what we are looking at when we view a portrait is a two dimensional likeness of someone at a moment in time, nothing more, nothing less. To derive information about a person’s personality or character from an image is about as reliable as using a picture of fruit or vegetables to determine how they taste!