Book Review: In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits
by Richard Grooms, Springville Road Regional Branch Library
In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits
You probably couldn’t ask for a more various collection of portraits than In Focus. From formal to casual, exotic to mundane, sublime to horrific, celebrity shots to peasant pics, old to contemporary, this collection seems to have it all.
“The Strange and Exotic” (chapter 2) has many notable pictures. A rural Russian family from 1917 stares blankly at the camera (save one boy, who’s wisecracking). We know their world will be devastated soon and this makes their stance all the more poignant and fragile. Do they have any idea of what will befall them? On another front, can a young woman carry off a mustache? Yes, if that’s what her people deem normal. An Ainu daughter sports her traditional over the lip tattoo as she delicately holds a flower. She provides a contrast to traditional Japanese concepts of femininity, 1922. So does a geisha from a more contemporary time. She primly holds a cigarette as she realizes she’s been caught in what she thought was a private moment. Teddy Roosevelt and hunting party display a jaguar they’ve just killed and apparently gutted. The cat’s head is well in front of the party and faces us. It’s sticking out its tongue, raspberry-style, as if it has the last word, subverting the macho poses behind it.
The definition of portrait is used broadly in this book. Included is a group of severed heads posted in Nanking in the '20s to dissuade lawbreakers. More conventional portraits are also here, as is seemingly everything in between. Tribal people address the camera in widely varying ways. A woman from Nauru, festooned with fishes that seem to be flying around her naked torso, looks sternly at us. She’s nobody’s fool. In contrast, two flirty young women from Algeria seduce the camera. I could never have guessed where they were from. The eyes of the girl on the right look almost Chinese. The 1914 date adds distance and hence confusion.
The “Away From Depression and War: The 1930s and 1940s” chapter goes heavy on the light and silly. The photos here were meant to offer a respite and diversion from hard times. The text assures us that not only National Geographic tried to cheer us up during these decades, it was just the way magazines were then, and some of this norm was a strain of propaganda. So: Look what you can do with vulcanized rubber!
“Cheerful Kodachrome Days,” which covers the '50s and '60s, could also be called “The Strange and Exotic.” Lobsterettes in Maine, happy snowmen, models modeling beef at Swift headquarters, while a mounted pig’s head smiles approvingly down from its wall perch. Who cares about Dali & Co. from the '20s? The '50s were the height of Surrealism as far as the evidence here shows. These decades didn’t run short on diversion either.
As you go through the collection, you see patterns and poses repeat themselves. No special attention is drawn to this, and that’s fine, as it makes the repeats surprising and subtle. A Tahitian woman, showing us her right side, recalls a sub-Saharan “Favorite Wife” we saw awhile back. That woman is in the same position, also shows us her right side, and she has a similar serious and confident look. The African woman is steely, while the Tahitian woman is almost seductive, but they parallel each other over the decades, across cultures, and over the span of the book. They never met, I’m sure, but they somehow meet here. In like ways, other men and women and groups meet in In Focus.
Toward the end of the book, the array of portraits has become dizzying. It’s good that the book doesn’t take itself too seriously and owns up to its fakeness and glitz. Sometimes the contrast in approaches and subjects is almost overwhelming. I’d rather spend time with this than The Family of Man.
You probably couldn’t ask for a more various collection of portraits than In Focus. From formal to casual, exotic to mundane, sublime to horrific, celebrity shots to peasant pics, old to contemporary, this collection seems to have it all.
“The Strange and Exotic” (chapter 2) has many notable pictures. A rural Russian family from 1917 stares blankly at the camera (save one boy, who’s wisecracking). We know their world will be devastated soon and this makes their stance all the more poignant and fragile. Do they have any idea of what will befall them? On another front, can a young woman carry off a mustache? Yes, if that’s what her people deem normal. An Ainu daughter sports her traditional over the lip tattoo as she delicately holds a flower. She provides a contrast to traditional Japanese concepts of femininity, 1922. So does a geisha from a more contemporary time. She primly holds a cigarette as she realizes she’s been caught in what she thought was a private moment. Teddy Roosevelt and hunting party display a jaguar they’ve just killed and apparently gutted. The cat’s head is well in front of the party and faces us. It’s sticking out its tongue, raspberry-style, as if it has the last word, subverting the macho poses behind it.
The definition of portrait is used broadly in this book. Included is a group of severed heads posted in Nanking in the '20s to dissuade lawbreakers. More conventional portraits are also here, as is seemingly everything in between. Tribal people address the camera in widely varying ways. A woman from Nauru, festooned with fishes that seem to be flying around her naked torso, looks sternly at us. She’s nobody’s fool. In contrast, two flirty young women from Algeria seduce the camera. I could never have guessed where they were from. The eyes of the girl on the right look almost Chinese. The 1914 date adds distance and hence confusion.
The “Away From Depression and War: The 1930s and 1940s” chapter goes heavy on the light and silly. The photos here were meant to offer a respite and diversion from hard times. The text assures us that not only National Geographic tried to cheer us up during these decades, it was just the way magazines were then, and some of this norm was a strain of propaganda. So: Look what you can do with vulcanized rubber!
“Cheerful Kodachrome Days,” which covers the '50s and '60s, could also be called “The Strange and Exotic.” Lobsterettes in Maine, happy snowmen, models modeling beef at Swift headquarters, while a mounted pig’s head smiles approvingly down from its wall perch. Who cares about Dali & Co. from the '20s? The '50s were the height of Surrealism as far as the evidence here shows. These decades didn’t run short on diversion either.
As you go through the collection, you see patterns and poses repeat themselves. No special attention is drawn to this, and that’s fine, as it makes the repeats surprising and subtle. A Tahitian woman, showing us her right side, recalls a sub-Saharan “Favorite Wife” we saw awhile back. That woman is in the same position, also shows us her right side, and she has a similar serious and confident look. The African woman is steely, while the Tahitian woman is almost seductive, but they parallel each other over the decades, across cultures, and over the span of the book. They never met, I’m sure, but they somehow meet here. In like ways, other men and women and groups meet in In Focus.
Toward the end of the book, the array of portraits has become dizzying. It’s good that the book doesn’t take itself too seriously and owns up to its fakeness and glitz. Sometimes the contrast in approaches and subjects is almost overwhelming. I’d rather spend time with this than The Family of Man.
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