Portrait without a person?
Finally! Winter is on it’s last leg! I know, I know, you can barely call this a Winter. Well, that’s more of Winter than I personally care for. Still, there is some fun to be had during the cold winter months, preferably something where I can feel Sunshine on my face. I let myself get talked into ice fishing. But only under the condition that I could bring my camera. And as we were walking all bundled up on top of frozen lake I though about how insane the whole idea is. What can I tell you! That’s me! I like to have my feet on solid ground. Nobody will ever catch me on top of a snowy hill with my feet tied onto a slippery board either!
But my boyfriends idea of fun is quite obviously very different from mine. It got me thinking, we are what we do, what we like even what we wear and the way we look is only such a small part of the package each of us is. To photograph a portrait of a person then doesn’t necessarily have a whole lot to do with their face, their body or the color of their eyes. A portrait of someone does not have to involve them physically at all. And so I played with this idea of capturing a portrait, a story of my boyfriend, without seeing him in the picture at all, without seeing his face, with him being only a small part of his World. The World he surrounds himself with, the World that defines him.
I thought we were going to rent one of those little housies on frozen lake where you set up your fishing rod and open up your flask. Well, not with my boyfriend, that’s not how it works! As soon as we got out of the car, he started organizing all of his stuff for the day. Fishing rod, little chair, cookies, ice drill. Ice drill?! He went out and bought an ice drill and this was only the second time he’s gone ice fishing in his life! These two images to me say so much about that day and about Horsie himself.
He loves solitude, he loves Nature and he loves experiencing something new. So as you can see, these are not just funny pictures of a guy with a horse head. Great photography to me tells a story. Because beauty without personality becomes boring very fast.
