posed

 

Artificial light. Studio backdrop. Frilly bench used as prop. Precisely placed subject sporting a large bow no less. Not exactly the recipe for a natural portrait, eh? Oh, add to this highly manufactured saccharine scenario a dollop of post-processing and you’d be hard pressed to find anything at all genuine about this image.

Except the girl.

I love intimate portraits done in places where the subject feels most at home and comfortable. But I think there is a tendency today to perceive only natural light portraits as genuine, and studio work as the contrived and second best alternative, even though I’ve viewed plenty of “natural” images that appear a bit staged and insincere.

I believe that in order for any portrait to have lasting appeal the hope is that some fragment of spirit or essence is conveyed regardless of location. Some intangible quality that is both particular to the subject at hand and yet somehow universal in nature, and compels the viewer to look again, closer.

I’ve photographed this little girl for years, mostly in natural light settings. She’s an extraordinary child who from the start has possessed a regal quality I’ve rarely seen in one so young. Coming from a highly educated family, deliberate in action and rich with tradition, she has to me, almost seemed to be from another time.

This recent portrait of her at five may be the one that reveals more absolutely all that I’ve come to see and feel is within her in the course of photographing her these past years. Even more than others I’ve created in a much more candid and natural context. Something about the way she carries herself in this setting hints at how nobly she’ll proceed on to adulthood. And it’s sort of an interesting contradiction that nothing at all about the portrait is authentic.

Except the girl.

~Cynthia