The Journey Of Portraiture / Tony Vaccaro's Work

Journey of portraiture

Portraits have been around since the beginning of time, that we can record, they have always been around  and have represented different things as time has progressed, the main thing that has been represented about portraits has been power, the person that was having an image made of them was seen as powerful.

The first piece of portraiture to be found was in 1365 BC, when Egyptian Pharoh Akhenaten carved a picture of him and his wife into stone. But even further than that some portraits have been found in cave drawings, the oldest art style to be found.

Portraiture changed massively when the camera was invented because it meant that people could take pictures of people when the photographer was ready, not when the subject was ready. This gave way more control to the photographer and meant that once the photographer took the image that was it, it had been taken and it could be seen by everyone. Portraits before the camera had been controlled by the subject, this meant that the subject could always look the way they wanted, whether it was to look powerful or rich they could choose. But when the camera was created people could see the rich and famous as they were when they were not in front of a camera.

Tony Vaccaro's Work


Tony Vaccaro was a good example of this because he would take pictures of the famous and the rich but he would pretend that the camera was not working and then he would take the picture once the subject had relaxed and stopped trying to look good for the camera. His work was based on taking pictures of people when they are being themselves, when they least expect it meaning that the images were of the famous and rich when they were being relaxed. A lot of Tony Vaccaro's work is based on this strategy and he has a lot of images that has used this.

Tony Vaccaro called this waiting for the decisive moment, this is what he did before he took a picture. This made his work unique and therefore made his images different because he captured the rich and the popular for who they really are and what what they seem to be, not who they are making themselves out to be.

 

 

 

 

Thomas Hoepker Profile

Thomas Hoepker was a Gernan photographer, he took many famous and well known images, one of these images was the 9/11 photograph that he took.

This image had a massive negative response by the public and as a response to that Thomas Hoepker removed the image from public observation for 10 years. The response from people was that they assumed that the people in the photograph were relaxed and uncaring about what was happening behind them. This is not the only photography he does, Thomas Hoepker has done landscape photography and taken pictures of different cultures around the world. One of the places he has been to is Japan, he took a lot of images of their culture and way of life while he was there. Thomas Heopker was born and raised in Munich, Germany.

 

Thomas Hoepker started taking photographs when he was of the age of 16 when his grandfather gave him an old 9x12 glass plate camera, he would sell his images to his friends and family members at the time, he would develop his images in the bathroom and kitchen of his parent’s house. Thomas Hoepker studied Art History and Archaeology during his college years and photograph throughout this time to help finance the money he owed for his education. After he had finished his education he became a photographer for “Münchner Illustrierte and Kristall” and was reporting all around the world, soon to become a journalist for Stern magazine and further on from that he became a cameraman of German TV Documentaries which is how he met his first wife, Eva Windmoeller, who was a journalist. The two of them decided to relocate to New York in 1976.

 

Thomas Hoepker was mainly famous for his image of 9/11 when some people were relaxing as if nothing was happening, this was a very popular image and get a lot of negative feedback, as a result of this Thomas Hoepker removed the image from public observation for 10  years. Then he finally made it available for people to see. Another image he was famous for was the pictures he took of Muhammed Ali.

Portraiture

Tony Vaccaro

Tony Vaccaro looked at portraiture in a way that he would only take images of people when he was ready. This means that a lot of his images captured people for who they really were and not what they were trying to be. Portraiture has been around since the beginning of time as a way of showing power or displaying a person or what the look like. Vaccaro took pictures of people when they were not posing, which showed the person for who they really were.

Tony Vaccaro