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THE
SFUMATO PORTRAITS
- From a review by Peter Ireland,
Wanganui, New
Zealand 1998
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post-Renaissance tradition of the portrait
representing, as it does, a faith that the head
can stand for the whole and even convey the
essence of a person, assumes the convention of chiaroscuro,
the effects of light and shade that define the
features and three-dimensionality of
physiognomy. This convention typically assumes
that the principal features will be, literally,
highlighted, with the secondary features in
degrees of shadow, and so, the light source must
generally be at a 45-degree angle to the full
face. The Sfumato portraits, by contrast have
the light source coming in at the back of
the head, producing the strange effect whereby
it is the principal features that are in shadow
and the secondary features highlighted. And such
is the intensity of this light that in most of
these portraits the outer limits of the heads
have disappeared, so that the unframed features
float disturbingly in a suggestive and
destabilized space. Conventional portraiture has
been subverted with the photographer exchanging
the role of portraitist for that of geographer
and geologist.
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photography george krause © 1961-2000
www.georgekrause.com
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