Likeness

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Julie, I've been wanting to start a thread on "exaggeration" for some time now. Just hadn't formulated my thoughts on it yet. I will work on it. I was thinking along the lines of stage whispers. I'll elaborate when I come up with an OT. I think the quote about exaggeration may illustrate that a likeness often really can't actually be a likeness and may have to be part fabrication, which is where I was a couple of days ago in this thread.</p>

<p>I'm having trouble reconciling your italicized <em>"my"</em> with likeness. And I'm not even sure what you mean by it. Do you mean you have questions similar to the ones I've asked (about whose rain) or do you mean the answer to the questions is that it is, for example, "your" rain that is somehow the likeness of rain. If the latter, that would seem at odds with the notion of likeness, so maybe you just mean the former.</p>

<p>In any case, interpretation is partly problematic here, as discussed in other places (and I sure hope I don't wake the sleeping beast). The photograph is more a showing than a telling, so I'm not sure where "summarizing knowledge" would come into play, etc. But I think there's a lot to be said for "extracting the salient" by <em>obscuring</em>.</p>

<p>I like the idea of reading (I would prefer viewing) an image actively, but I've run into viewers who need an occasional dose of ritalin.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>I (perhaps mistakenly) see the "my" as a tacit acknowledgment that likeness and cognition are inseparable. We "see" likeness via good-enough matches with memory. Or in the case of spiders, snakes, etc, instinctively, through the amygdala.</p>

<p>Then the viewer comes in with her own memories to match with the image...</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Apparently dogs are experts at likeness. Even without invocation of their superior senses of smell or hearing, their minds (and that of my cat) seem to work on the basis not so much of memory but of visual placement of things in their environment and a constant reference to that. Remove or change the likeness of that visual map to what it was yesterday, and they become concerned. It would perhaps be interesting to understand their perceptions of likeness, were that possible.</p>

<p>(for the grammaticians amongst us, should "were" in the above sentence be replaced by "was" or, better, by "should" that "be" "Were" doesn't sound right to me (I think it is a Brit inheritance), although it has a likeness to what I normally see in writing. There you are, "likeness" is not always the desirable result).</p>

[luis_g]

<p>I touched on this earlier when I wrote about likeness between things in reality, as opposed to things in an image compared with something that isn't there (therefore in memory), like Julie's picture of her friend on the steps. I agree with Arthur regarding likeness in the present/real time.</p>

<p> </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>[brief grammatical foray: "were" is correct. It is used in the past subjunctive. The construction could have been something like "if it were possible." Your usage is correct because the "if" is simply implied. After all, you don't hear Tevyah singing "If I <em>was</em> a rich man!" ;-)]</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Luis said, "..and the problem with that is...?" The problem is that that only gets the minimum. Hooting and pointing. The more the instruments can be known and finely embedded in the image, the finer the music I can make.</p>

<p>Fred asked about the italicized "my" in my last post. That was just me laughing (again) at how we seem to be working the same track. Like two dogs jostling for the same scent trail. Which response I had in mind just now when I read Arthur's post about dogs ... and I'm laughing again.</p>

<p>On "exaggeration" -- that would be a wonderful topic. But ... but it does not escape the question or the assumption that you have something in mind when you exaggerate. And what might that be?</p>

<p>I'm already thinking about it; the way that the ... (what's a safe word?) naive (?) photograph(er) seems to be frustrated by a fractal presentation of information in the sense that whichever direction you look there will simply be more levels of undifferentiated information -- or is that information at all? Whereas some of radical philosophers have suggested that information is sporadic -- like a crumpled or wadded handkerchief instead of a flat one. Things are close in consciousness that are not literally close in space/time. Exaggeration might be used to point to the folds in your or my handkerchief.</p>

<p>Can I get away with one of my favorite Serres quotes aimed at those who don't like folded handkerchiefs?</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"... as if contradictions are separate from each other, as if they are repugnant to each other in the combat of reason and language, but contraries cohabit in the black box of things, so that if, one day, some subtle and playful dialectician disconcerts you, you are silenced, you do not answer, you rejoin the children and play with the spinning top."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Oh, and one little bit, a William Paulson quote that's about reference. Maybe useful for answering the question of what "likeness" refers to?</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"… Reference, in Serres, is neither given nor refused; it is something that happens, that is worked toward, that is an event."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yeah, well, then what is the event "like" -- to what does the event refer? (Serres actually has that covered too; he says history is a spiral where cause and effect change places over and over and over ... Tick tock.)</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Fred, thanks for that heads up. I think, though, I prefer something like "if that was possible" to "if it were possible", whatever the likely grammatical transgression</p>

<p>Luis, I appreciate your comment about what's there and what's not in comparing the image and memory. I will read your former post, as well as others that are related. </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Arthur, I'm sending you an email.</p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Julie - "</strong>Luis said, "..and the problem with that is...?" The problem is that that only gets the minimum. Hooting and pointing. The more the instruments can be known and finely embedded in the image, the finer the music I can make."</p>

<p>Yikes, nothing inherently wrong with that, it works well when composing for and playing instruments, but it's... big.on.control. The above also implies (in art) that the results won't just be finer, but also predictable, no? The other can lead to new music, instruments, and syntheses, impossible for either maker or viewer to predict.</p>

<p><strong>Julie - "</strong>Things are close in consciousness that are not literally close in space/time"</p>

<p>Yes, and this is relevant in my mind to the idea/discussion of likeness. A good likeness can be metaphorical, gestural, etc.</p>

<p> </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>METAPHOR! Thank you, thank you, thank you. GESTURAL! Double thank you, thank you, thank you.</p>

<p>I wonder if a likeness doesn't HAVE TO BE metaphorical. If a likeness wasn't part metaphor wouldn't it be the thing itself and not a likeness? (Serious question mark there.) Rain is rain but a picture of rain is . . . well . . . a picture of rain. And a picture of rain might be as close to rain as the verbal use of a simile to describe rain in terms of teardrops.</p>

<p>Yet, I still sympathize (empathize?) with Julie because I did want that self portrait to look like me in as non-metaphorical a way as possible. But maybe the way to get it to look like me still required a metaphor, just not a terribly dramatic one.</p>

<p>As to Luis's other point, I once had the opportunity to meet Calvin Simmons at a casual party at a friend's house way back when. He was the young conductor of the Oakland Symphony back in the late 70s/early 80s whose life was cut short when he died in a boating accident not long after this evening. After a few drinks, he and another young musician sat down at the host's out-of-tune upright piano (which would have been more "suitable" for honky-tonk music) and played some <a href="http://video.mail.ru/mail/zlata-lu/2814/2843.html">four-hand Mozart sonatas</a>. They made it "seem" (likeness) as if it should be played only on such an instrument, Calvin breathing the tempo through his nostrils to let his partner know when to come in and using his cigarette as a baton to establish the tempo before beginning. It was precisely the spontaneity and adaptation to the moment and means that was so brilliant and that made it, in many ways, feel more "like" Mozart than most of the stuff I've heard on Steinway baby grands.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>I'm just thinking about the Calvin Simmons affair a little more. How did I get you to smell what I experienced? I painted a picture with words and I linked to something that played for you the music but offered a NOT. It was this music but this is NOT the kind of instrument it was played on and this was NOT what it sounded like. I actually think this is a better likeness than had I had a video with sound of the evening. There's a vagueness (open-endedness? obscuirty?) to the likeness that requires something of you. That involves you. The involvement is part of Mozart and was part of the evening.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>You furnished the desire to make me want to be there, structure and raw materials, fuel for my imagination, trusted and enjoined me to jump in alongside you, and construct the rest from my own resources. I <em>collaborated</em> with you and created a bespoke story and likeness like no other: A specific, tailor-made talismanic story, a synthesis born of us, but unlike either of us.</p>

<p> </p>

[Julie H]

<p>Damn you Fred G. You've taken the words out of my keyboard yet agaiin. I was just trying to get a minute to type something about how your description was a "not" that depended on the absent likeness ... something similar to the way that Sommer's rabbit [ <a href="http://unrealnature.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/sommer_jackrabbit.jpg">link</a> ] depends on the absent [living breathing] rabbit. I feel like I'm on a game show. I have to be quicker with my buzzer if I want to win the prize.</p>

<p>Luis, I very much like that last post. May I please have some more? I want to know how we do, visually, what Fred's friends did. They had an instrument (the bad piano). They had an very well-known referent (Mozart). How do I do that visually? <a href="http://unrealnature.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/sommer_jackrabbit.jpg">Sommer's rabbit</a> does it by being so rabbity; we get the instrument (which in this case is singular and simple and very ... redolent), thus we get the music?</p>

<p>Fuel for Luis. Serres (I'll stop with the Serres stuff after this; he's sort of loony) says that harmony is for dead people. It's known; it's safe. It's been done. Noise is where discovery and invention lie. Or at least it *might* be there. It might just be noise.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Imagination, metaphors, whimsy, lots of wine, ample breathing to the cortex, heightened sensitivity (to music, life, oneself, others), a high, all are superior to mere likeness. Beyond likeness.</p>

<p>Beyond likenesss. I appreciated your e-mail, Fred and I hope you got a little from mine.</p>

<p>Beyond likeness. It's my current little drug. </p>

[luis_g]

<p>Returning to the Rain...has anyone seen Robert Cummings' "Fast and Slow Rain"? I tried to find a decent web pic of it...this is about the best I could find...</p>

<p>http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/100854?search_id=1</p>

<p>Likeness? Good likeness?</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Julie, I await Luis's ideas but will offer something myself. One, of many, comparable ways I'm thinking of has to do with the marriage of content and technique and medium. They adapted the content (Mozart) and their technique (looser and more casual/familiar than what they would have sought in a concert hall or even a salon) to the situation (a party) and to the piano (an out-of-tune upright). They knew intimately that there is no "<em>the</em> Mozart Sonata for Four Hands." There's only what they play at the time they play it. So, in photographs, the assumption of "the right" technique or a "perfect" presentation may get in the way of likeness. Visual noise, a looser technical approach might sometimes be married to the given content in order to establish this likeness. The underlying tones and overtones often establish harmony. (Serres is just plain out of his mind if that little snippet represents what he really has to say about harmony. It's not just the notes and it is so alive.) So, in the photograph, it's not just the imagery, it's the manner of presentation of that imagery, what's laid over and under the imagery that's photographic. It's the integration of imagery, technique, presentation. I'm sure we can get into more specifics (blur, lighting, textures, perspective, etc.) if that's what you want.</p>

<p>[P.S. I awaited too long and Luis has already spoken.]</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Let me try some things out with you, if I can.</p>

<p>I'm currently seeing likeness as the sort of equivalent of proper named things: Fred (proper name) as opposed to "man" or "person" or "figure." A likeness is particular. It doesn't move there, it is there. If I knew you (in person) it would be inconceivable that I would see you as "man" or "person" before I saw you as Fred (which, of course entails those generic characteristics). Very often, probably most often, while making photographs I'm either not caring one way or the other whether something is proper-named, or I am aggressively moving to scrub out its proper-name qualities. I am moving the things from the particular to the general or abstract. Often this is freeing them; allowing the things greater reach, wider reference; re-identity, blurring of identity, or loss/transformation of identity in creative ways. So, deliberately (even if I haven't thought of it specifically this way) leaving out likeness can be an essential creative move. Which, in my opinion, makes it valuable to learn more about where likeness is found -- in order to get that freedom; to do the "not" thing, the stuffed lion, etc.</p>

<p>So, back to likeness. When I say it's proper-named, paradoxically, that doesn't mean that it's named or that I necessarily know its name. I just mean that it is particular even if I don't know its particular name. I hope you can understand that. For example, there is non-proper-named rain. The kind that happens in the weather report, water falling from the sky. Proper-named rain is that particular rain that falls on my house, which is entirely different from the (experience of) rain that falls in town or the rain that falls on my mountain hikes when I get caught in a thunderstorm or the rain that falls where I used to live, and so on. The lion that's about to eat you is a very particular lion.</p>

<p>Your musical event seems to me to be a proper-named event. It was what it was in the same sense that Fred is what Fred is. It was not a generically describable thing (as I have just described it; "your musical event"). It was ... itself. We could name it Bob (name being a non-meaningful label for that which is what it is ...).</p>

<p>If a likeness is what it is, then it will "bring its own light" to use a phrase from an earlier post. By which I mean that I have to take it purely on its own terms and those (particular) terms will dictate how I photograph it. I'm not doing "man"; I'm not doing "person"; I'm doing Fred. That's a big constraint when compared to the freedom I described in the first paragraph, above. At the same time (I'm groping for what I think here) this constraint, this being forced to work by its light, seems to me to be how I find out new things. By letting the subject demand/lead me, I get ... somewhere I could not have gotten on my own. Whereas the "freedom" that I get by playing with concepts or genaralities or abstractions -- by using content creatively (and loving doing it) does not do this (at all? or as much?).</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Shoot. I meant to answer Luis. I think I may have seen that rain picture somewhere (<em>Aperture</em>?) but I can't remember and the linked thumb is just too small for me to see properly.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Julie, I'm about to run out of the house for several hours, but thanks for explaining it. Very understandable and well stated.</p>

<p>So, this is one of the reasons I started pulling the camera further back as I am developing my approach. Many will say, to use your terminology, they capture more of the proper-name-ness or particularity of a person when they get close up, right up against the eyes (the so-called windows of the soul). I often find that close-up stuff -- often not always -- a less particular and proper-name-like approach. Environment and surroundings give me the room to locate a person and I think location starts to allow a person some particularity (like Sartre's café, where the café acts as the ground on which Pierre can appear). It's one of the reasons, if I have a choice and it's practical, I prefer to shoot people in their homes or in a place of their choosing rather than in my home or studio. Or, I come up with a place that seems suited to them or that I can make work with them.</p>

<p>It can, of course, go beyond place. I use my intuition along with my camera. So, even if I don't know someone terribly well, I've always had a good sense of finding characteristics or qualities about them that seem to go along with "who they are." There's always something individual, from a crooked sideburn I can emphasize to a part in the hair, from <a href="../photo/6357458">Jeremy's</a> wide eyes (which got wider with the striped shirt and polka dots behind him) to <a href="../photo/7887994">Gerald's</a> protective intensity (which came through in the first 5 minutes after I met him) which seemed to be communicated by letting him keep his protective armor of a coat on and stand among the bars in the parking garage which we just happened to come across.</p>

<p>Now, I don't hope or kid myself into thinking that everyone would describe Gerald as protective or intense from his portrait but I can hope to treat him as Gerald and an individual and give people a sense that they are looking at <em>him</em>, and not someone else. I try to accompany him with Gerald-ness.</p>

<p>I actually don't experience creating this sense of particularity (fabricating with an eye toward genuine likeness) as a constraint. It just opens a world of challenge and possibility. It's a very exciting part of making portraits to me.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>[A word of caution]</p>

<p>I used some very specific descriptions in the above, particularly about Gerald. Those words did not occur to me consciously during the shoot. They come up afterward, and they are too literal and they are incomplete. I don't think a whole lot of this stuff is that literal, though there have been times when I've had a very specifically-named quality I wanted to achieve. Let's say I was getting from Gerald what I sense a lot of people who run across Gerald and who know Gerald would get and these surroundings and his garb seemed in sync with presenting a likeness of him, not matter what name we would each choose to give that (by name I mean adjective).</p>

[Julie H]

<p>What I mean by constrain is this: I've spent many years (most of my life) taking pictures and I have, if I may immodestly say so, many kinds of well-developed skills. All of which I can, as any good, experienced photographer can, use intuitively; without thinking. I think pictures. I see pictures. Stuff sorts and shifts and shapes to my eye. Because of this, because of what I've developed myself into being (it was not easy; I value it extremely), I enjoy a viscerally, and immediate pleasure out of "handling" the visual pretty much all the time.</p>

<p>To do a likeness, I have to deliberately, strictly, <em>stop</em>. Make myself stop <em>handling</em>. Make myself give up seeing in pictures. Look. Wait. Think. Connect, connect, connect. Once I have felt, located, tasted, dialogued with that connection, then, and only then, can I bring in what has been beating at the door and screaming to be let in -- my picture-making self. And I still have to keep it on a very short leash, making it work to what I "found" while not seeing-in-pictures. I am hugely, constantly, almost uncontrollably distracted by visual possibilities; to constrain myself to work to the tempo (fast, slow or excruciatingly intermittent) of one, unique presence is not something I do well (okay, most of the time, not at all ...)</p>

<p>Moving on to what needs to be in the picture, if I can manage to control myself, it seems to me that the key is that the center needs to hold. The center being, that proper-named subject. If the parts start invading or arguing or challenging, then we have a different kind of picture (the kind I love to make ...). Second key is what's already been mentioned; there has to be a connection. If the subject is denying, or blank-facing, or otherwise not engaging me (which, however, doesn't require eye contact; I've seen backs that speak awareness). Third key, it seems to me that there is an optimal distance. Too far and I get the lion-in-the-zoo disconnect. Too close and the subject inverts; as if I'm meant to see the subject as myself (I'm being bumped into/inside his identity -- looking out). That optimal distance seems to have a lot to do with, probably, biological norms. A picture of someone on the street requires different distances and indications of connection than does a picture of someone in a bedroom -- to get into "likeness" territory.</p>

<p>I absolutely love your written description of your two pictures, Gerald and Jeremy. Very helpful and useful for me sorting out the above. To me, and this is purely my selfish reaction as if I had been taking the pictures, the one of Gerald is an outstanding picture and an outstanding example of most of what I'm talking about. I love it. At the same time, for me (strictly an opinion), Jeremy is a wonderful example of the kind of picture I would make simply because I could not resist, could not help myself -- because of all those irresistable visuals. But because of that, because of the competition (because it's a great picture!) it is, to me, not nearly so good a likeness as is the Gerald photo.</p>

<p>I haven't even gotten into how, if I do manage to control myself, I work what I know into a visual representation. Having a good understanding of a subject is only the necessary first step; next I have to go back into myself and do a translation or at least know how to wait for it to be (strongly/clearly) manifest, again, without losing it to other visual temptations. At least in this case, I should be comfortably, if twitchily, back into my familiar territory of picture-making.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Julie, thanks for your comments on the photos. How and whether to respond specfically? I share some of your reaction. But I don't want to be in a position of seeming to tell a viewer what's REALLY going on (since I know one of these fellows well and know whether it's an ACTUAL likeness and how others who know him respond to the photo). I'm not sure how much that would matter. Could the kind of likeness you're talking about be apparent to friends and relatives but not strangers? In my mind, yes it could. And there's a difference in the way people who know someone and people who don't will react . . . sometimes. I think there may be two not-strictly-distinct kinds of portraits, ones that are made for a wider audience and ones that are made for the narrower range of viewers who know the subject. Which is why portraits of famous people are in such an interesting class, since they straddle both kinds. There are more individual carriers of likeness and more universal ones. It's why a wedding portrait and a portrait meant for the study <em>might</em> be handled differently from a portrait that will get a wider viewing.</p>

<p>I mostly disagree with your paragraph on "what needs to be in the picture" to capture the kind of proper-name likeness (love that phrase) you're talking about. Too specific and too universal. The center being the subject takes me back to the recent thread on distraction and the related theme of focus and attention. Some subjects need to feel lost among the ruins. That is their likeness. And sometimes, by not being the center, one can allow the likeness a more subtle but perhaps more effective entrance. If Pierre were found in a smokey corner of the café, barely visible through the hum of the rest of what's going on, that could provide a very effective likeness of Pierre, depending on who Pierre is. Pierre might, at that moment, or at any moment, need to be lost in the café, not holding a center. As for connection, some people simply don't connect and connecting with them in a way will actually destroy their likeness. Arbus may be a good example of that. I think many people wanted to see more overt signs of connection and when they didn't find those expected signs they thought she was just exploiting. I think many of those reactions misunderstood what Arbus was doing and the kind of likeness she was getting. Distance (and location) as I said are keys for me, but there's no one formula and no guidelines for too much or too little distance. Because distance is at play alongside perspective, expression, lighting, contrast, colors, etc.</p>

<p>I think the danger (as with many things photographic) is stating a general principle. I think if we were to look at photos that seem to bear this likeness (and it would have to be among several viewers because one viewer might be swayed by taste where several viewers might be able to agree on likeness a little more objectively) we would find it's more about the various combinations of factors than it is about isolating one factor or one aspect of a certain quality. I'd much sooner work from a bunch of likeness photos out than from a general principle in. If there were a formula, it wouldn't be fun, and it most likely <em>couldn't</em> get to the kind of likeness you're talking about. It has to be a much more relative-to-the-individual matter.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>Likeness can be a type, this is often found in many series done today (Becher descendants). While we see a likeness of particular machine at a particular location, from resonances between images, the likeness soon becomes typological. And as I have mentioned earlier in this thread, I believe there are many levels/kinds of likenesses.</p>

<p><strong>Julie:</strong> "I just mean that it is particular even if I don't know its particular name."</p>

<p> At the viewing end, one often doesn't know whether it is particular, or even real. Was it acted out? Photoshopped in? How would we know if Fred issued instructions to a subject, for example? The viewer has no way to verify, only to accept, doubt, reject.</p>

<p>If there was a director and script, as in the movies, fictional likenesses (Remember Othello?) seem to work as well as literal similitudes. How many people know what Captain Bligh or Fletcher Christian looked like? I would suggest that the actors give us a different, second order mythological likeness, one that is <em>convincing, </em>that facilitates our acceptance or surrender, depending on one's contrarian-ness. The same happens in advertising. We know it's a fiction, but if it steam rolls over -- <em>or nudges, cajoles, seduces, </em>enjoins the viewer into participating, it works. The former keeps the viewer passive, the other is to one degree or another, interactive. </p>

<p>Usually the former relies heavily on signifiers of visual authority, cultural momentum, and/or production values, all implying actual verisimilitude. The latter, leap over all that, in a way tacitly negotiating with the viewer's criteria, like a friend talking you into something, as opposed to getting orders.</p>

<p><strong>JH -</strong> "The lion that's about to eat you is a very particular lion."</p>

<p>It's <em>that </em>lion, to be sure, but you may not know anything about it except its lion-breath, teeth crunching your bones, and claws ripping you end to end.</p>

<p>While Fred's event may have been proper-named, Fred cited it as a likeness and illustration of the point I made about music, which was....generic.</p>

<p>I am not forced by likeness, other than it has a kind of gravity about it, which I dialogue with, surrender to, or disregard. I use it and modulate it, often wordlessly and intuitively, until it appears "right". </p>

<p>Photographers deal with it using many of the usual tools. For example, juggling the ratio of content to context, punctum to studium, the use of slight-wide to normal lenses, etc.</p>

<p>However, when working in a monosemic mode, likeness, proper-name likeness, is very, very useful, though one will want to modulate how accessible the piece is, of course.</p>

<p> </p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Fred - "</strong>Some subjects need to feel lost among the ruins. That is their likeness."</p>

<p>Yes! People perceive, and behave differently in time and space. A likeness can include this, too. My mother was a ballerina in her youth, remained exceptionally fit, and until she got in her 70's, she seemed weightless and impossibly graceful she moved about. I know people that seem outside of time, caught in an eddy of their own, and others who are flitting through it, like a flight of sparrows looking for a place to roost in late afternoon. A likeness might include or be primarily about things like this.</p>

<p>This is something that Avedon, Penn, Halsman, and others explored, and in many cases, not literally, but in constructed partial fictions.</p>

<p>Why is it that sometimes a face that is unlike the normally projected masks the ones we and in the case of celebs, others as well, seems like a startling likeness? Is it because the in-between moments, the loosely structured fragments are also a part of our awareness of another? Or because they <em>are</em> like glimpses of the Other, and like the implied but missing rabbit in the picture Julie provided?</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Luis and Fred, I'm pretty much agreeing with what you are saying. It feels to me like you are circling and sorting the very things that I've been circling and sorting. Luis, I have no problem with fictional likeness; all pictures are fictional a few generations after were made. It's a genesis thing; if I am getting something that is not anything else (good lord, look what you have driven me to writing!); a likeness is not a gear in the machinery of the picture but is an autonomous machine unto itself.</p>

<p>I want to particularly respond to Fred's "If Pierre were found in a smokey corner of the café, barely visible through the hum of the rest of what's going on, that could provide a very effective likeness of Pierre, depending on who Pierre is. Pierre might, at that moment, or at any moment, need to be lost in the café, not holding a center. As for connection, some people simply don't connect and connecting with them in a way will actually destroy their likeness."</p>

<p>For me, I have no problem with Pierre not connecting with me. Connect is not the right word (how do I connect with the rain?). Do I have to use that awful phrase, "get it" or maybe know it in the a carnal,bodily sense? However I do (this is my own feeling) have to feel that whatever is being likenessed is central. If it's not, then, for me, the picture has moved up a level to being a likeness of something larger; an encompassing event or phenomena, not a likeness of Pierre.</p>

<p>I am really stuck (in a good way) thinking about what it is that is so, I don't know, solid or filled-up or right about a good likeness. Why is it precisely its difference, its bossiness in its own identity, that makes it so delicious?</p>

<p>Luis, in many ways, the solitary, the solo, the elusive or remote person is, for me, easier to envision as or generate into/out of a likeness. It's the gregarious, social, conformist, company man/woman that, at least for me, is hard to generate into/out of a likeness. However, it is surely also easier to make charicatures out of either extreme.</p>