Time To Cut The Grass

Should really have been a more conventional portrait today, although arguably this is a good portrait of the man cutting the grass, taking pride in his work and creating a pattern that many thousands of people will see in the coming weeks. But it isn't "...a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed", to quote Richard Avedon's definition of the photographic portrait, used by Robin Gillanders in his lecture on The Photographic Portrait at the National Gallery this lunchtime. The lecture was linked to the Taylor Wessing exhibition currently on at the National Portrait Gallery and it was interesting to hear Robin's take on the selection. He felt it was a little too traditional and that it could be time for their selections to reflect a more varied idea of what a portrait is. Like me when I saw it in the gallery, he felt that the picture of Oscar Pistorius in the dock was more photojournalism than portraiture. Although given the amount of cropping that the picture involved it might actually fall foul of the World Press Photo judges. And with many of the other images commissioned by magazines and newspapers are they all following a standard approach? To illustrate the point Robin also showed us some images by Sol LeWitt from his 1980 book Autobiography - all sorts of objects from his life, rather than conventional self portrait pictures. In today's era of the selfie a different take on the idea? Plenty to think about.