“I never want to see another picture of ________.” Industry veterans share their pet peeves on themes in contemporary photography. In this series they present their “rule” along with five photographs that break the rule in an effort to show that great work is the exception to the rule.

Rule Setter: Shannon Randol, Curator, Baldwin Photographic Gallery
Rule Breaker: Angélica Dass

I never want to see another studio headshot, ever. While there is a rich history of images with persons in the studio setting, the headshot is thin. Often burdened with commercial or social context forcing its composition to be an immediate turnoff for viewers. I’m thinking of the model, actor, executive, or politician who needs an association of name with face. Admittedly, these are necessary for such recognition but I suspect they go no further. This type of imagery reeks of inauthenticity and is easily forgettable. So much so that their very existence suggests repeated viewing; similar to how access to information has become so available that we generally don’t bother to learn it, just recall it.

There are exceptions to this rule, in photographers whose reputation is recognized by the headshot. Julia Margaret Cameron would be at the forefront of my consciousness. While her work is not exclusively shoulders up, the iconic images attributed to her, tend to be. However, most contemporary headshots give the impression that the sitter is nothing unique, that they simply sat in the same chair, against the same backdrop that many before have and many after will. While each person has unique characteristics, these images don’t make those features available.

Angélica Dass, with her Humanae project, belongs in the company of Cameron as someone who brings the individual to viewers. The images Dass creates actually uphold some of the constructs that make most headshots boring. Each image is composed in a similar manner, sitters address the viewer directly, and the backgrounds are all uniform. This last element is really what makes the project important. In other headshots it is the element that is distracting.

The backgrounds that Dass creates allows the viewer to simultaneously see the unique qualities of each sitter in two ways. First, she photographs the sitter on a white background, samples pixels from the nose, fills the background with the sampled color, and then labels the image with matching PANTONE® color name. Where the background of most headshots has nothing to do with the sitter, these are actually part of the viewer, becoming an extension of the sitter. Secondly, the naming structure of the sampled colors emphasizes the nonhierarchical nature of the PANTONE® color system. Or as Alejandro Castellote says about the project, “a color catalog in which the ‘primary’ color have exactly the same importance as ‘mixed.’”

The more I scroll through the images in Humanae, the more I want to edit my first sentence.
—Shannon Randol