Is There Beauty in Vulnerability?

Landrum Kelly · August 20, 2011

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179381

Is being willing to lose the freedom referred to near the end? There is, after all, social armor in winning. Or is it about truth, authenticity, above all?

How would one capture such an idea in a photograph?

I think that certain expressions caught in a photo give us a momentary, unguarded glimpse into the psyche. Is that why we value candids, when we do? The only photo I liked of George W. Bush was made when he was finding out about the attacks of September 11. Although I disagreed vehemently with his politics and his response to the attacks, I can relate to the feeling of being caught with the necessity to make a decision in the face of a seemingly insurmountable challenge--or with the feeling of being surprised in a very disagreeable way. We are vulnerable, it seems, in the face of our inadequacy to deal with a situation.

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/schoolvideo.html

--Lannie

Landrum Kelly · August 20, 2011

Not that any of the above had a thing to do with beauty. . . .

--Lannie

Landrum Kelly · August 20, 2011

Oops! Wrong link. This one is closer, although it is not quite the one I was looking for:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2020215/President-Bush-explains-blank-face-told-9-11-attacks.html

Please note the third picture down. Exactly when it was made is not the point. What I am trying to get at here is that even my political opponent, in a moment of surprise and vulnerability, can somehow--for at least one brief moment--reveal a glimpse of humanity that I can relate to. That person in that situation, although not beautiful, can reveal attributes of humanity that I can relate to. Perhaps in some sense that essential humanity is beautiful. The unguarded psyche, that is, is more interesting--and more approachable--than the political, public relations, or bureaucratic mask.

As for what which is approachable, I confess that I do find the approachable woman to be more inviting and thereby more beautiful than a woman who, though physically beautiful, seems the more ugly by reason of being unapproachable. The smile invites. The haughty look repels. --Lannie

Norma Desmond · August 20, 2011

I confess that I do find the approachable woman to be more inviting and thereby more beautiful than a woman who, though physically beautiful, seems the more ugly by reason of being unapproachable. The smile invites. The haughty look repels.

</blockquote>

I try (try, don't always succeed) not to see women, or men, as being there for me to feel invited or repelled by or for my sense of beauty or ugliness to be fulfilled. Seeming unapproachability often is just that, seeming. The reality is often very different. There is great challenge and there are great rewards, and even beauty, when the unapproachable is approached.

A vulnerable or a non-vulnerable person or subject of a photo, or any other subject, may demand or require empathy, not attraction or repulsion.

The question has been asked, "How would one capture such an idea in a photograph?"

I start by not judging my subjects (to the extent that's possible for me) and wanting to know something about them and show something about them. If I want vulnerability, or think I see glimpses of it that I want to explore, I try to meet my subjects on an equal playing field and offer something of myself to them. I also consider how I will photograph them . . . perspective, focus, background, lighting, mood, tone, texture. I'd have a hard time determining whether this photo shows a vulnerable man or not. For me, it shows vulnerability and armor. Both of us felt, though, that it captured some sort of truth. (It's also very much a considered and intentionally-made photo, not "a candid" but candid nonetheless.)

http://www.photo.net/photo/6778475

You mentioned the beat generation.

"I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness." --Kerouac

</blockquote>

Photos tell profound truths. They also lie. Or at least they alter reality significantly. I do well to remain always aware of all that. A stopped clock, when it's stopped on the current minute and hour, can fool you into thinking it's telling the time correctly. A photo of George Bush and anyone else, candid or not, can do the same.

Landrum Kelly · August 20, 2011

A vulnerable or a non-vulnerable person or subject of a photo, or any other subject, may demand or require empathy, not attraction or repulsion.

</blockquote>

This is so true, Fred, but sometimes our first reaction is what it is, even though it may be something that we should overcome. I have had many a hostile student enter my classroom, and the trick is to disarm them, to make them want to be there, to make them feel welcome. This is all the more true at the African-American college where I decided to teach after I reached my sixties. Some students probably see me and first think "the man" or "my high school vice principal," etc. I try to get them to get beyond their first impressions and reactions, too. I love to see the hostile or fearful look melt away.

A smile generally works pretty well. Sometimes a question that draws them out works, too.

On the street, the camera can provoke a defensive reaction. Getting past that is no doubt an art unto itself.

--Lannie

Norma Desmond · August 20, 2011

A smile generally works pretty well. Sometimes a question that draws them out works, too.

</blockquote>

Yes, but in the case of photographing or being in a situation where you're not the teacher, this may not be about what you can do for the woman you were talking about. This may well be about the woman herself, who seems to you more ugly because she looks unapproachable. It may be about why she looks that way or that she looks that way. And it may not be about changing that. It may be about accepting that as what it is. That might require you to be (no matter how you may look) more vulnerable, and willing to approach what you find ugly or unattractive.

People often ask me how I get my subjects to relax for the camera. I often ask back, why would I necessarily want them to?

luis_g · August 20, 2011

Lannie, sometimes the haughty look is absolutely perfect.

Landrum Kelly · August 20, 2011

You're both right, of course. If I were seeking a vulnerable visage (not to say that I ever consciously have), then that would not be the one that I would try for.

If I am just going for reality, on the other hand, then haughty is definitely a reality, and it can be a beautiful one, too--and sometimes one not so beautiful, but still worthy of being photographed.

--Lannie

Norma Desmond · August 20, 2011

It's also the difference between people and pictures of people.

Apropos of this, I'm watching In A Lonely Place on TV right now, directed by Nicholas Ray, with Humphrey Bogart and <a href="http://filmjournal.net/clydefro/files/2007/04/gloria-grahame-gets-a-rubdown.jpg">Gloria Grahame</a> (one of my favoite filmed women). He's a writer and she's his girlfriend, currently typing and reading his scripts.

Her: I loved the love scene.

Him: Well that's because they're not always telling each other how much in love they are. A good love scene should be about something else beside love.

The same is likely true for beauty.

Landrum Kelly · August 20, 2011

Fred, it sounds like the analog of happiness: he who seeks it will not find it. Happiness has to be the by-product of some other undertaking.

--Lannie

Norma Desmond · August 20, 2011

Lannie, for me, it's not so much about seeking it (though your quote about happiness seems often true), it's about what love, happiness, or vulnerability looks like.

The shot of Grahame is from the movie. She looks vulnerable (to me), and often plays this type. A part of the vulnerability is the shot itself, including the woman in the background. That's a directorial decision, not necessarily about Grahame the woman or actress or subject.

Landrum Kelly · August 20, 2011

I missed the link before, Fred. Yes, I think that you are right. In any case, if we are talking photography, we have to get back to how it looks. In the case of the shot of Grahame, the presence of the figure in the background does seem to increase the sense of vulnerability of the woman in the foreground--all the more because she has her back to the other.

--Lannie

Landrum Kelly · August 20, 2011

Here is a video of a woman in a variety of vulnerable situations who shows no sense of vulnerability on her face:

http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item.php?id=49981

--Lannie

dan_south · August 20, 2011

If I set my camera down in the middle of a busy street, is it beautiful because it's vulnerable to being crushed by a bus?

Landrum Kelly · August 20, 2011

Dan, I was thinking only of persons, and so I shall have to think about your question. I am not sure that danger increases a sense of beauty--but a psychological sense of vulnerability qua openness in the face of a person might conceivably enhance the beauty of the person.

--Lannie

Landrum Kelly · August 20, 2011

I might have better begun if I had asked whether the sense of vulnerability is visible only on the face, or whether it also inheres in the situation portrayed in the photo.

Fred, the example you have given seems to involve a directorial decision to create a situation in which the woman appears to be vulnerable, heightening the sense of vulnerability that might already be there on her face. Are there faces that look more vulnerable than others, in and of themselves (excluding children)? Is beauty a factor in heightening the sense of vulnerability, as William Kahn seemed to suggest at the outset?

If one were out to set up a photo in which either the hero or heroine appeared vulnerable, how might one go about it? Here is a video clip in which the characters all seem to appear very vulnerable at times:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJiZKoGxj8c&feature=player_embedded">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJiZKoGxj8c&feature=player_embedded</a>

--Lannie

Landrum Kelly · August 20, 2011

Fred, thanks for directing us back again to photography, as you always do. I appreciate the digressions and tangents that we go off on, but it seems more useful to the Photo.net community if we can always finally tie it all back to photography. I sometimes seem to forget that, and it seems that you have to keep reminding me.

--Lannie

AJHingel · August 21, 2011

Lanni, you wrote with reference to the French Alpinist Catherine Destivelle,

woman in a variety of vulnerable situations who shows no sense of vulnerability on her face

</blockquote>

She does not look vulnerable, but she surely puts herself in situations that make her experience what vulnerability is - as a mother with a teenage daughter. She has had two big accidents, one of which with an open broken leg at an altitude of more than 4000 meters in the Antarctique where she climbed alone with a friend - and survived ! She at least knows that she is vulnerable - one of the reasons why she limbs.

<a href="

is an interview </a> with her in English from 2008. No vulnerability there either !

Personally I'm much more, as photographer, interested in showing social situations where people manage their vulnerability (we all carry it) by acting as expected or unexpected in the social context according to social conventions. To believe that a simple smiling face is a sign of openness (as used above as synonym of vulnerability), is in my eyes to the extreme, simplistic. In some social contexts, smiling is what is expected of you, so you better smile ! In other social contexts and places, smiling is sometimes contradicting social conventions and could be perceived very differently (playing games, falsehood, naivety, "being foreign" etc). Our role as photographers, as I see it, is to shoot these very different social ways of acting and living. Shortcuts are not an option. Such photos convey beauty if they can convince the viewer that they are at least part of Truth.

See: untitled <a href="http://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/untitled-1968.jpg">Laughing girl </a>(1968) of Winogrand.

Landrum Kelly · August 21, 2011

Laughs and smiles are related but different, right, Anders? That said, smiles can at times be as spontaneous as laughs--although both can be affected. Even so, there is a type of laugh that is so spontaneous that there is no mistaking its authenticity.

Personally I'm much more, as photographer, interested in showing social situations where people manage their vulnerability. . . .

</blockquote>

Anders, I never much thought about many of these things until the thread began to unfold. (One always learns from one's own questions, I think, especially if others will respond and teach one.) What I mean here is that I have not thought about whether or not I like to show persons managing their vulnerability--or "betraying" it, revealing it. I started out with the rather simple-minded implicit premise that a certain vulnerability on the part of another is often linked to my own perception of his or her beauty--or at least appeal.

We have all seen the "bureaucratic mask" or the "public relations smile" that serves to hide real feelings and thoughts (and then there is the old "poker face"), all of which serve to protect us in certain situations by hiding actual (authentic?) feelings and thoughts. Feeling vulnerable is something that we all know something about, and we justifiably do not always reveal evidence of our vulnerability or anger (or fear or whatever) by too-open expressions.

I guess that, now that you have raised the issue as to what is more "interesting," I would prefer to capture the unguarded moment in which a person's (perhaps) fleeting expression tells the real story. I also like persons who seem to wear no masks, whose feelings seem to instantly show on their faces.

Such marvelously expressive faces are, I think, more interesting to me, and they are typically the faces of those who are not really trying to manage the impression of vulnerability. In spite of the fact that there can be great survival value in masking one's real feelings and thoughts, persons who risk themselves by dropping the mask interest me more, I think.

I love the <a rel="nofollow" href="http://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/untitled-1968.jpg" target="_blank">Laughing girl </a>(1968) of Winogrand! She seems so spontaneous, so real, so unaffected! But is she? In any case, I want to get beyond the mask, now that I think of it.

Here is a series of shots of a young woman who seems to have dropped the "mask" and pretty much every other symbol of self-protection, and in a public setting at that. I especially love the third shot, although I admittedly do not know exactly what is going through her mind. It looks as if she is just realizing that she is being photographed, but I see no sense of horror upon that realization:

http://www.photo.net/photo/11161673

http://www.photo.net/photo/11161672

http://www.photo.net/photo/11161671

(Yes, I think that clothes are often largely symbolic, for what that is worth. As for their link to shielding vulnerability, yes, there is that social and psychological function, too. Nudity can be linked to the perception of vulnerability, but clothes are hardly the only thing that we wear to protect our vulnerable psyches--and they are arguably not even the most important things that we "wear." Expressions can be a lot more suggestive--or not, depending on the message that one wants to convey. I guess that we are talking about "protection" here, regardless of what it is that we "wear." Discussions of vulnerability are, I suppose, logically linked to discussions of protection--vulnerable to what threat? protection from what threat? Social condemnation, ostracism?)

--Lannie

Norma Desmond · August 21, 2011

In the movie, Gloria Grahame's vulnerability, as in so many good films noir, turns to paranoia. Vulnerability often has something else lurking behind it. It's suggestive. It has potential.

.

"Are there faces that look more vulnerable than others, in and of themselves . . ." --Lannie

</blockquote>

Yes. Your Jo Stafford video features Julianne Moore, expertly filmed by Neil Jordan in The End of the Affair. Moore has a naturally vulnerable look, which I've seen in most of her films. I do think a lot of that is in her face itself.

.

Is beauty a factor in heightening the sense of vulnerability

</blockquote>

I don't find the two very related. Sure, vulnerability and beauty can co-exist, casually rather than causally, IMO. Montgomery Clift was beautiful and often vulnerable, demur eyes, a bit of a twitch in his smile, a kind of reticence. (In <a href="http://www.wildsound.ca/images/elizabeth_taylor_and_montgomery_clift.jpg">THIS PHOTO</a>, he seems more vulnerable than Liz, who has the more sure gaze.His eyes have a less focused gaze accented by the strong shadows, his head a slight downward tilt against Liz's more strengthened upward direct look at him.) <a href="http://movieactors.com/freezeframes-77/BreakfastAtTiffanys66.jpeg">George Peppard</a> has a vulnerable look. John Gavin is beautiful and rarely looks as vulnerable. Check out <a href="http://content9.flixster.com/photo/12/02/82/12028255_gal.jpg">Gavin's</a> strong-lipped, sturdy appearance compared to Janet Leigh's wide-eyed vulnerability.

[We may, of course, disagree on who looks vulnerable and who doesn't. Nevertheless, I think many of us find it in the faces themselves. Whether or not we agree is secondary.]

luis_g · August 21, 2011

How does vulnerability (or invulnerability) look? It varies. Vulnerable and fearful/anxious looks very different from vulnerable and trying to control it, or vulnerable and at ease or peace with it and the potential consequences. How one looks at it determines how it looks to others.

As photographers, it would seem that we have more control over our own vulnerability (how far are we willing to go out on that limb?) than we do that of most subjects, though there are many ways of manipulating the subject in that direction, too.

AJHingel · August 21, 2011

Lanni

Laughs and smiles are related but different, right, Anders? That said, smiles can at times be as spontaneous as laughs--although both can be affected.

</blockquote>

Right ! Although it is very difficult in photography to tell the difference between spontaneous and "affected" (agonistic) smiles and laughter. Other elements in the frame might provide the needed additional information. In the case of the Winograd shot, the dinner dressed mannequin behind might be such an information - or just the ice-cream in her hand.

I have not thought about whether or not I like to show persons managing their vulnerability--or "betraying" it, revealing it

</blockquote>

I expect that several others in this thread have not thought about it either (Fred an exception, if I understand him right), and yet it is an essential question if one believes that smiles indicate vulnerability. The questions is as essential to be aware of, as a viewer, of course.

I would prefer to capture the unguarded moment in which a person's (perhaps) fleeting expression tells the real story. I also like persons who seem to wear no masks, whose feelings seem to instantly show on their faces.

</blockquote>

It would be nice just to agree with you on such common sense agreeable viewpoints, but, as far as I see it, real life is more complex. What one would interpret as the "real story" or "masks", others would describe as "projection" (good Freudian standard) and noone can be sure who is right. "Those who are not really trying to manage the impression of vulnerability" might just be better in hidding their games to the photographer or the viewer. The Laughing girl of Winograd is such a border case, as you rightly describe it yourself, Lanni, but most, if not all shots, are such border cases, which makes photography and all visual arts so complex and challenging.

By the way, when I wrote:

Personally I'm much more, as photographer, interested in showing social situations where people manage their vulnerability (we all carry it) by acting as expected or unexpected in the social context according to social conventions.

</blockquote>

the message was not an attachment to concealing vulnerability, but an interest in scens tat show how "managing it", in terms of living with it in different social context, like smiling or laughing in worlds where smiles and broad laughter, are the norms.

alan_zinn · August 21, 2011

Whenever we feel in real or imagined jeopardy our expressions reveal it. Bare naked or hanging over a precipice obviously makes one feel and look vulnerable. That's the point of thrill seeking and common themes of nightmares. A perpetual vulnerable look such as some actors have (M. Clift, I agree, being a good example) comes from deep in their personality. Who wouldn't feel vulnerable in some way or another being photographed? How would you like to have had Avedon's crew fussing over you just because he thought you were interesting looking? All his subjects look vulnerable as hell! Lost in reverie or concentration is THE most likely vulnerable place in the everyday world that might attract the lurking photographer, or worse.

Landrum Kelly · August 21, 2011

Lost in reverie or concentration is THE most likely vulnerable place in the everyday world. . . .

</blockquote>

Alan, your words brought back a couple of my own family snaps that no one would consider great photos, but which manage to capture that sense of being "lost in reverie or concentration."

Here is my mother, now housebound because of arthritis at the age of ninety-one (very soon to be ninety-two), still living alone and managing to make her own meals. This photo was made last year, and I really have no idea what she actually was thinking about:

http://www.photo.net/photo/11564795&size=md

And here is my younger daughter caught deep in thought back in November, 2009:

http://www.photo.net/photo/10231711

--Lannie the lurker

Norma Desmond · August 21, 2011

"I would prefer to capture the unguarded moment in which a person's (perhaps) fleeting expression tells the real story. I also like persons who seem to wear no masks, whose feelings seem to instantly show on their faces." --Lannie

</blockquote>

I'm unclear here whether you're talking about people or people photographed.

For me, it's about photographic reach. An expression is candid or posed, tells the "real" story or is fabricated, is masked or not, or somewhere in between. Any of these can get to the viewer, can provoke sympathy or empathy, fear, love, etc. It's about the working of the expression, in its photographic totality. By "photographic totality," I'm talking about the expression, the subject's awareness or lack of awareness of that expression, and the photographer's stance toward that expression and what he is able to convey with it, which can be more than the expression itself. It may be a TAKE on the expression. Photographs often have that kind of depth beyond the first level of the expression.

Take again Grahame. She is ACTING. She might be a very strong, invulnerable woman who plays a type or a role well. When I watch her movies, I don't ask myself whether Ms. Grahame is likely or not vulnerable. I stay with her character. That fabrication reaches me just the way it should. It is, in its own way, quite real.

The "beauty" of photography may be in the tension found in its being tied to the "real" world but so readily able to leap away from it; it is created and, by nature, at least somewhat manipulated (in good and bad ways).

I don't prefer candids to posed shots or vulnerability to armor. Seeing the<a href="http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/04_03/queenALMS0505_468x453.jpg"> truth and power of armor</a> (exaggerated and perhaps even caricatured by Leibovitz) or viewing a well-conceived, posed, dressed, and heavily coiffed and made-up <a href="http://alafoto.com/wp-content/uploads/Eugene-Robert-Richee-Marlene-Dietrich-for-The-Shanghai-Express-1932.jpg">Robert Richee shot of Marlene Dietrich</a> can be as powerful as the most candid <a href="http://www.artsjournal.com/tobias/Robert%20Frank_Funeral_%20reduced.jpg">Frank "street" expression</a>, for me.

Speaking of Frank, it can be complicated. Here's an example of <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/___CSfnFo3qc/SegqrKinwPI/AAAAAAAAAHA/4t4FvFxOUZ8/s400/RFCowboy.jpg">CANDID ARMOR</a>, as I see it. And, as an alternative, what about <a href="http://www.atgetphotography.com/Images/Photos/RobertFrank/frank15.jpg">THIS ONE</a> by Frank? Is the woman in the foreground armored, candid, both? Does the woman with the somewhat distraught expression help offset a different perception of the woman in the foreground? These women are united by THE PHOTOGRAPH. Is that real? Does it matter?

It's about what the PHOTOGRAPH is doing, not just what the PERSON is doing. Photographs have a variety of purposes and a variety of effects. Art is about creation and sometimes (often?) re-creation. Photography is often taken to be and sometimes, in fact, is more about re-creation (is the scene real, am I seeing someone's "essence"?) than creation. I just try to be open to what's going on, what the game is. In each of these games, there is something profound to be seen and experienced.

_______________________________

Lannie, why do you think those two photos wouldn't be considered great? You partially answered the question when you referred to yourself as "Lannie the lurker" (whether serious or tongue-in-cheek). To me it shows the importance the PHOTOGRAPH can have above and beyond the person photographed. I, too, am probably more conscious of the lurking feeling (which, for me, creates distance) than the particular look of either person. Now, I and others have played plenty with lurking, or what I might call voyeurism, and it's interesting territory to explore. But it seems clear that's not the "game" you were playing here. You wanted a close, genuine, feel for these people and these two moments. You might have engaged them and arrived at a photo you'd prefer or you might have remained hidden to them but done some things differently. What, in your mind, would make these great (and not undermine what you wanted out of them)?

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