Today’s Post by Blue Moon Staff
I like to turn things upside down, to watch pictures and situations from another perspective. Ursus Wehrli
In the first and second seasons of Netflix series Stranger Things, the “Upside Down” was an integral part of the plot but I don’t necessarily understand its place in portraiture. I’m referring to a recent trend in portraiture I’ve seen on the Internet, especially on Instagram. That trend is photographing female models lying on a sofa, bed or another piece of furniture so their head is at the bottom of the frame; in other words upside down.
I first thought this style was an homage to pinup models from the forties or fifties but when looking at books from Peter Gowland, one of the premier practitioners of glamour photography of that era, I didn’t see similar poses. I searched the ‘Net for some old Hollywood publicity shots and didn’t find any there either but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any. To be doubly fair some of these upside down portraits can be quite dramatic and at least are not photographed with wide-angle lenses used close to the subject that, thankfully, is no longer an Internet trend.
Maybe I’m a curmudgeon and not embarrassed to admit that but I find these upside down images a little disconcerting; seeing a mouth where there should be eyes, which I think is the focal point of any portrait. I have a theory that one reason that some subjects like this look because they have a fear of being photographed. *Scopophobia is an anxiety disorder that’s characterized by a fear of being stared at by others especially in a photograph. I also suspect that some portrait subjects like these kinds of images because it doesn’t look like them. Or maybe I’m all wet about this and am not embarrassed to admit that either.
How I made this portrait: I looked though my files and found that I had, indeed, once made an upside down portrait. I photographed Maria in the living room of my home using a mixture of daylight from a large window at camera left and a Paul C. Buff DigiBee without a reflector placed at camera right. The camera used was a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens at 34mm with a manual mode exposure of 1/30 sec at f/8 and ISO 640. This was one of four similar shots that I made of her at that time and it’s the one I liked best for featuring on this blog.
As I’ve said here many times, this is not a ”my way or the highway” blog. You may love your upside down portraits and so do your clients or portrait subjects. And I’m cool with that.
