Likeness

<p>When/if you say that a photograph is a good (or not good) "likeness," what do you mean?</p>

<p>If you feel that "likeness" has to do with "reminding," what and how is it doing that? To what is it referring -- I'd be interested in as much detail as you can muster.</p>

<p>If you feel that "likeness" doesn't have to do with "reminding," then what is it "like"?</p>

<p>And finally, what place, if any, does "likeness" have in art?</p>

<p>It's hard to get such a deceptively simple concept into words but I think, for now, It's a ( visual ) <em>being on the tip of your tongue'ness</em>, that what makes the <em>likeness</em> of a photograph, in contrast with it 'just being alike'... A likeness suggests at least enough individuality, enough of a mask of its own, to not reveal that to which the photograph or the piece of art is a reflection of immediately to the viewer, or perhaps even never.<br /> Maybe it's as much about reminding you as it is about letting you forget, what it is / was referring to.</p>

<p>If I have any sort of regular interaction with somebody (or a single, very memorable one), I have in my mind a sense of how they come across. Their bearing, their prevailing mood, their habits of posture, eye contact, and expression. For me, a "good likeness" is one that resonates with that distilled-down portrait I already have in my head.<br /><br />On a more nitty-gritty level, there are things like lighting and pose ... did the photographer settle on an image that emphasized a facial feature one doesn't particularly note in person? Did the stylist do something with makeup or hair that makes the results seem distractingly <em>not like</em> the subject's familiar presence? I recall being told that I created a good likeness of someone, and in discussing why, it turned out that I caught a facial expression (lit up with the glow of the subject's bemusement and a bit of irony) that the viewer in question thought to be a good match with their own experience with the guy.<br /><br />In art? All likeness bets are off. Art is communication. If the subject, or the photographer, or the person employing the photograph as a tool of expression needs the experience of seeing the subject to be <em>counter</em><em></em> to their familiar bearing or appearance, or to be very much in keeping with it ... so be it. But if the purpose of the art relies on the audience knowing that the image is a good likeness, or is specifically <em>not</em> one, likeness-ness is still playing a role. But it cannot play any role (in communicating through art, or otherwise) if the audience isn't already familiar with the subject and doesn't have a <em>mental</em> likeness already on board.<br /><br />I think of a good likeness less as a <em>reminder</em> of the subject, and more as a good match to my existing thoughts and experiences with the subject.</p>

<p>Julie, for me it is first of all for you to give more details in your questionings, because the use of the term "likeness" can mean anything between extremes depending on the subject, the situation and the person using the term. You could give an example. It might help to understand.</p>

<p>It can mean <strong>either</strong> that the photo does not do anything more than to reproduce what the viewer would expect from a photo of the subject, <strong>or</strong> that the photo for the first time according to the experience and knowledge of the viewer, it succeeds, where others have failed, to show the inner truth of the subject (or whatever term you would use to say the same!). In the latter case it tells something new about the subject that the viewer acknowledge as being like something that he were not aware about the subject. A revelation. I would expect that whenever "reminding" comes into play, we have to do with the first case mentioned.</p>

<p>Mostly, I would expect anyone that uses the term to express himself better and provide some more details on what he actually would like to convey to whoever listens. </p>

<p>Firstly, and in regard to your last sentence, I think "likeness" has little if anything to do with art. It is too close to the "expected" as opposed to the "unexpected." When art works it is for me in the realm of the imagination, the unanticipated, the original (not "like"). When someone refers to "likeness" I am really turned off, maybe not completely, but very nearly so. "Wow, that image has a great quality of "likeness". It is usually followed by "what sort of camera do you use?" (Mr. Maughan, what sort of typewriter did you use?). And so on.... </p>

 

<p><strong>Julie - "</strong>When/if you say that a photograph is a good (or not good) "likeness," what do you mean?"</p>

<p>It can mean more than one thing. It can be a good illustration of something or someone in the sense that it depicts the visual in a way that is sufficiently faithful to the referent in an optical way. It can be more than merely realistic, of course. Many other qualities besides point-plot correspondence can figure into this. Sometimes likeness can be subtle, or regarding something ephemeral, immaterial, ideological, and/or almost beyond the senses and the imagination. What it refers to is already in the past, and to some degree not the same as it was at the instant of exposure, as is the print, though in different folds of time.</p>

<p><strong>JH - "</strong>If you feel that "likeness" has to do with "reminding," what and how is it doing that? To what is it referring -- I'd be interested in as much detail as you can muster."</p>

<p>I carefully dodged using the "r" word, but in this context, it can have to do with evoking the <em>perception and/or memory </em>of the referent, which can take many aspects (why do I get the feeling we're being set up? :-) and triggering memory is one of them. But what about when you've never known/seen the referent? What are we being reminded of? One has to go with what one has (the picture). In that case the photograph acts like a strange attractant, accreting meanings, fabulations, etc from us, in a similar way to that in which an irritant in an oyster becomes encycted into a pearl.</p>

<p>Most photographs (though clearly not all of them) of things/places/people we know or have experienced are, or can function as, mnemonic devices, or fetishes for the referent. I think the latter has something to do with our mirror neurons, the Wi-fi of humans.</p>

<p><strong>JH - "</strong>And finally, what place, if any, does "likeness" have in art?"</p>

<p>Not so much a locus, but function. It is another dimensional toy/tool. It can be a very useful thing to modulate.</p>

 

 

<p>This is yet another word game. And yet again it relies on another meaningless word ("art") to pretend there's substance.</p>

<p>John,<br /> .....and not very more substance-free than your always repeated messages on the subject.</p>

<p>It's the "ness" part that might be troubling, because it suggests universality, which often is an overreach. "Likeness" is most often used (by non-philosophers) in a benign way. People who know a person usually like a portrait of that person if it's a good "likeness." Seems about right to me. Art/photographs can certainly start with a good representation and build from there. A portrait photographer will work with likeness, use it, stray from it, exaggerate it, emphasize it, undermine it. If I get a really good likeness in certain situations, I may have a very good photo, because of that. Sometimes it's a starting point, sometimes the end game.</p>

<p>There are different ways to approach getting a "likeness." One can be direct or one can be suggestive or. . . .</p>

<p>Likeness can be a kind of connection as much as a reminder or memory. Yes, likeness, along the lines Phylo and Luis are thinking of it, can be an evocation. Very much so. In a photograph, it can be a calling forth as much as a looking back. Likeness may seem to operate just on the surface, just on the visual level. Photos are visual so there's nothing wrong with that. Also, likeness can be <em>brought to</em> the surface as much as found on it.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>This is yet another word game. And yet again it relies on another meaningless word ("art") to pretend there's substance.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>And now that that's out of the way, yet again, the thread can continue - in all <em>likeliness - </em>by the means of words like *likeness* and *<em>beep</em>* and *whatever*. Yes, shocking but true.</p>

<p>Phylo and Fred, you are both at about where I feel myself to be. I am ... more confused the more I think about it. I think Matt has it right, especially in the examples he offers, but for some reason I *want* to have a wider definition. Is there a loophole if there's such a thing as a "likeness" for moods or emotions? A scene can have a "feel" that might be shared by non-acquaintances.</p>

<p>Luis, you're safe; no set-ups in this thread. I'm genuinely asking, and grateful for the variety of responses on what "likeness" ... is.</p>

<p>I started thinking about it when, in a book on ethnographic filmmaking, the author said, in passing, that "likeness" gets completely left out of most ethnograhic films. That one finds "behavior" but no individuals. The writer also mentions how Ernst Gombrich says that "likeness" can emerge in film as opposed to a snapshot because in film we can sort the individual from the mask by watching for continuities that emerge out of variation. Lastly, the same author (David MacDougall) says (this is a recurrent theme with him) "within every documentary is a kind of cavity, the negative imprint of the missing persons and events which are not there. ..." and I won't quote any more. I find that last bit depressing; disturbing; and it made me think about what's there or not there; what's left without likeness, etc.</p>

<p>Just because I started this thread and it can be useful to have an example to chew on, here is a picture I made of someone who was a good friend of mine (he died about ten years ago). It's very like him, and yet, in looking at it, I wonder how it looks to a stranger. He looks kind of mean but he's really probably about to burst out laughing. The details -- the shirtail, the pocket protectore, the knotted bootlace, the water jug on the step next to his boot, the cigarette he wasn't supposed to be smoking (and which killed him in the end) etc. are all details that make this a "likeness" to/for me. Also the fact that he's sitting on his back porch almost certainly telling me a tall tale and I'm almost certainly leaning against my car laughing while his wife shouts commentary through the screen door ....<br>

<img src="http://unrealnature.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/ivanhoe.jpg" alt="" /><br>

[This is a snapshot, taken on the spur of the moment; I am not a portrait photographer ...]</p>

<p>"Likeness" is fine in photography, either as someone's response to an approach to reality (In terms of everyday, documentary or depictional photography), or as an evocative term in someone's subjective response to that.</p>

<p>But, please, leave art out of the question when discussing likeness, or try to make a very good case for its importance in art photography. That is quite arguable, at least in the way that likeness is commonly evoked.</p>

<p>Julie, in regard to your example, likeness is only important to those who know that gentleman, or as reference to those who may meet him (which of course, is now out of the question, as you mention). The example also shows that "likeness" only relates to depictional or documentary or portrait photography, but not to art. </p>

<p>Arthur, I disagree. Likeness is also present and an issue in Art. I mean, you can take it for granted, or as a given, and let it go at that, but it can and does go much further, even with landscapes. You might know it as "Realism".</p>

<p><em>"The example also shows that "likeness" only relates to depictional or documentary or portrait photography, but not to art." </em>--Arthur</p>

<p>What a confining and limited use of the word "art"! Why would art, of all things, be used in such an exclusive and exclusionary manner?</p>

<p>Art has a tradition going back to the Greeks of being about "likeness." Of course, it is also about other things, but to deny this significant aspect of most art is to turn a blind eye to a lot of what's happening. Emotions can be wrought with many different tools. As Luis said, "likeness" is one of them.</p>

<p>elitism?</p>

<p>Anders, I'm sorry you're unhappy with my comments about the repetitive invocations of "art," even in questions like Julie's. And I'm sorry are unable to distinguish between philosophy and semantics. Maybe it's a language or cultural issue.<br>

It seems to me that photographers are less capable of speaking intelligently about "art" because they think of it in terms of "pretty" or "graphic design" or "representation" or "technology." The painters I know think of art in entirely other ways. Maybe that's because they're perceptive, or even "elitists." I know Limbaugh and Beck have problems with "elitists" but I don't think Thomas Jefferson or VanGogh or Avedon did :-)</p>

<p>As to Julie's image...she evidently considers it a likeness. Who would deny her that? She presented it that way, irrespective the chatter that surrounds it.</p>

<p>To me it'd simply be a generic uncomfortable, overweight cigarette-smoker, younger probably than he looks...except that Julie has identified him...somebody I don't know or care about. Looks like a plumber I know. I'm satisfied that Julie's man looked like that at that time...a likeness to the extent that any image is. A cartoonist might have done as well, perhaps with more editorial insight or guesswork (a cartoon, right?). It's probably an entirely adequate image of that man in that time and condition, nothing for her to apologize for.</p>

<p>Invoking "art" and "reality" when Julie wanted to play with another word is standard here. All discussions get diverted from photography that way. It's a neurosis.</p>

<p>Folks. John is chumming the water as he always does when he has nothing better to do. Same old same old.</p>

<p>Fred and Luis,</p>

<p>"Confining" is quite the opposite of what I had in mind when excusing likeness from the realm of art. Our intelligent cave men ancestors probably wanted to depict likeness or reality in some of their cave drawings of animals or other inhabitors of their environment, but they may not have been at the stage of visual imaginations and any connection of that with the state or spirit of man. Or they may have. Hard to know for sure at this late date. When a child produces a drawing that has only a faint resemblance to us as to its inspiration in reality, it may be a likeness to the child but not necessarily to the adult. Because it may not be perceived as a likeness does not make it is art, either. Producing an image of demonstrable or perceivable likeness may be classed as art, but it often reflects more on the craft knowledge and motor perfection of the artist (like a Bateman) than on a statement that can be called by many as art. The trouble with photography is that it is allied to the tendancy of the instrument to record what is before it unless the photographer can transcend that temptation of a physically recorded likeness.</p>

<p>I may not satisfy you with this response, but the artists I know, including myself (sorry, John, but "art" is not a status symbol or some ephemeral concept for me but just an activity involving imagination and communication amongst the other parameters), are mainly not interested in producing a visual likeness of their subject matter and subject, but something beyond that. Photography has been handicaped ("confined", if you will, Fred) by the likeness quest since Nicéphore recorded his first bitumen emulsion image nearly 200 years ago. Thankfully, some gifted photographers have directed attention elsewhere than the likeness quest.</p>

<p>John, it was Julie herself that wanted us to reflect on the relation of likeness and art, which I think some are attempting to do here.</p>

<p>Arthur,</p>

<p>Photography isn't handicapped or hampered by any particular quest but only by thinking that there is only one kind of quest or that some kinds of quests are inherently unartistic. As an alternative, I suggest it's all a matter of the approach and pursuit, not the genre (separating documentary and portrait photography from art is a shocker) or goal. It's in how the goal is pursued and realized, and how it looks and feels, that I view photographs, not just in the specifics of what that goal (or one of the goals or an aspect of the goals) may be. Thinking that something like "likeness" is a monolithic concept that would exclude it from art or that all artists would pursue it in the same way or in the xerox-like manner you've assumed would be the handicapping of photography to me.</p>

<p><br /> One of the painter's assets is a refined use of perspective. That's because he wants what's on his canvass to look in some significant ways "like" what people see in the world. He then riffs off that, but he doesn't trash "likeness" in his quest for a supposedly more lofty, more "artistic" spiritual and imaginative fulfillment. He rolls it into one and doesn't worry about bringing his imaginative quest down by trying to get some of his elements to look "like" something. If Monet's haystacks didn't bear a likeness to haystacks, they'd be abstracts . . . or boats.</p>

<p>Isn't all photography and *<em>beep</em>* ( such a dirty word, no use, no worth ) a likeness of the world, if not in appearance or form than surely in content.<br>

I also didn't take likeness necessarily to be about something being or striving to be a complete copy of something else. It can, but it can also be a feel, a mood, an evocation.<br>

-------------<br>

The likeness of and between each of Bernd and Hilla Becher's <a href="http://www.c4gallery.com/artist/database/bernd-hilla-becher/bernd-hilla-becher-gas-tanks_1983-92.jpg">water tower photographs</a> is that each subject in them is precisely different than the next, while the photographs share a likeness in form, concept and execution.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Good observation about Bernd and Hilla Becher's work, but bad observation about "all photography," since some photography doesn't attempt to present "a likeness of the world" ...some exists for its own sake, only incidentally related to subject, some other photography intentionally creates non-likeness (science fiction photoshop, fashion, many weddings, Karsh heroic portraits etc).</p>

<p>As to "beep," I think it's amusing that some prefer to be called "beepers" over "photographers" or at least plead to retain the "beeper" label. Has to do with insecurity about their work IMO, but my view is minority here, where majority rules philosophy.</p>

<p>I don't think anyone was specifically calling him or herself a *beeper* here as opposed to photographer, and if so who cares.I certainly won't and will never, I think photography doesn't need to be art in order for it to be as art. But why should that be a concern to you, how anyone views him/herself. And there wasn't any specificic mention of *beep* as being more worthy a label than photography. It was simply used in a question. The only one giving assumed power to the word seems you, through your constant railing against it.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Good observation about Bernd and Hilla Becher's work, but bad observation about "all photography," since some photography doesn't attempt to present "a likeness of the world"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I don't take likeness - in a photographic context - necessarily to be about something being or striving to be a copy of something else. It can, but it can also be a feel, a mood, an evocation. A photograph can evoke the likeness of something ( something "in / of the world " can be as fictional as non-fictional ) besides being a likeness of something.</p>

<p>Fred,</p>

<p>Your active mind (something also possessed by most posters here....) often reads more into a comment than is there, and that often bears your own imprint (I am not bothered by that modification as I enjoy reading your own take on a theme). I will repeat again here that I for one am not mainly interested in producing a visual likeness of my subject matter and subject, but something beyond that, something that transcends what is there.</p>

<p>You are quite wrong also to think that I would automatically exclude portraiture and documentary photography from that. It simply depends upon the mind of the photographer and how he sees, and not the subject matter. Monet's gardens and haystacks are modulated from initial visual information he had and are primarily enjoyed by the viewer for elements other than a likeness to his original envisaged scene (whether seen or constructed in his mind).</p>

<p><strong>Arthur - "</strong>I will repeat again here that I for one am not mainly interested in producing a visual likeness of my subject matter and subject, but something beyond that, something that transcends what is there."</p>

<p>Maybe so, but Arthur, forgive me for saying it, your trees look like trees, specific trees, your child like a particular child, chairs and pool like...see what I mean? They're not abstractions, nor generic, even if we do not have the referent at our disposal. And transcendence demands a springboard or departure point, doesn't it? True, that can be in the viewer's mind sometimes, but not always. Your photographs are a prime example.</p>