Can you photograph emotion?

Avotius

Avotius

Some guy
Local time
3:55 AM
Joined
Dec 5, 2005
Messages
3,518
Location
Seattle
View My Gallery
One of the things that I find my teacher friend and I talking about from time to time is photographing emotion. We debate photos taken by people such as Constantine Manos or any of the old greats like HCB or Capa or Frank or whoever. Looking from picture to picture and first commenting on the feeling the image gives us but then also thinking about "did this person capture the emotion....or did we just respond with emotion to what was captured?"

What do you think? Is there a specific photo or something that when you look at it you think "that is happiness" or "that is anger" or "this is joy". Is there any work out there that when you look at this you think the person has capture the quintessential essence of emotion?

Please, discuss this amongst your selfs, we do here and find it quite interesting to see different peoples responses to the same pictures. Please though show examples, your work, others work, the greats, give your points of view substance as my friend tries to pound out of me.


ps. I forgot to mention, when my friend and I do this we do not look at any words written with the photo, no articles or explanations of what is going on. We are looking for just raw feeling from the photo itself, but I encourage you to write some of your points of view on why.

As another acquaintance of mine said "Today people flips through photos and magazines really fast, a really good photo stops them" -M. Yama****a
 
Last edited:
I'm sure we photograph emotion. I just hesitate when it comes to the viewer interpreting the emotion. Far too often a photo is described as showing a person with such and such emotion/look in the yes, but when I look at that photo I see something rather different. Maybe it's just me but I think most people are notoriously bad at interpreting the emotions on people's faces and in their body language. A man holding his face in his hands, is he sad or tired or wary or just rubbing his eyes?

(I'm at work so I can't provide examples of photos right now. Will try to later)
 
2286363017_45f987f925.jpg
 
I think emotions could be interpreted directly or indirectly by the observant. It is really great art to nail emotions that are universally same way interpreted. I mean, sometimes the emotions are only contextually evident, but while observed by different people we have different understanding. Try this one

U2130I1194366673.SEQ.0.jpg
 
it brings up "what is emotion" and "what is photograph". does emotion equal expression?, if yes then it can be photographed, if not... the no. i guess it boils down to each persons take on the matter...

personally; i could take a photo of the look on your face, and the guy behind me at the 1hour shop could react to the photo, but he would not be seeing your emotion at the time of snapping the pic. otoh i have no doubts this subject can raise some spirited discussion at rff
 
thorirv said:
otoh i have no doubts this subject can raise some spirited discussion at rff
Click to expand...


Care to explain why? We have great success here talking in our little groups about these things, it seems that a group of people who do nothing but look at photos should be able to find something in it.
 
namely because of what you say, that you have success in discussing various matters of photography, where people have opinions from pretty much all directions. (could i have been messing up the english language??, in any case my comment was meant in the best of ways ,-)
 
thorirv said:
namely because of what you say, that you have success in discussing various matters of photography, where people have opinions from pretty much all directions. (could i have been messing up the english language??, in any case my comment was meant in the best of ways ,-)
Click to expand...



Oh my....im afraid I am the one who make the mistake. Misread. I have been thinking in Chinese for so long here that I miss things sometimes, sorry, its all back to front for me lately....🙄
 
It is for this reason that I love street photography. Though I myself have not taken any, being relatively new to photography, I enjoy the photos posted here and at photo.net which include street photography. Portraits are great too. I find myself often taking a seat in a park or at the university and just watching people go by, trying to read their emotions. It is fascinating. When looking at street photography, it is as if I am there, walking with the crowd. Do I misinturpret the emotion? Probably much of the time. What I think is more important is the emotions that it stirs up in you. In Lazar's photo, I think of an elderly gentleman happily recalling distant memories which are invoked by the image/letter he is holding. In "This is happiness - by Gary Winogrand:", I agree that that photo captures the emotion of happiness.
 
Sparrow said:
Seems we just proved you can at least interpret some emotion from a photo, but misinterpret the emotion in text very easily indeed

Note the smiley face 🙂
Click to expand...

Why the smily face?

There is a whole field of study in facial emotion, and a great deal of communication is done non-verbally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microexpression
It is hard for words to convey the message as accurately, or at least it take more words.
In fact I've heard the expression "A picture is worth a thousand words"

I am surprized, that this is not assumed as a major reason to take pictures of people.
 
Holmz said:
Why the smily face?

There is a whole field of study in facial emotion, and a great deal of communication is done non-verbally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microexpression
It is hard for words to convey the message as accurately, or at least it take more words.
In fact I've heard the expression "A picture is worth a thousand words"

I am surprized, that this is not assumed as a major reason to take pictures of people.
Click to expand...

Yes, that would explain why you took my post literally, there’s no irony emoticon you see. The smiley was to indicate a lack of malice.

<enigmatic smiley>
 
Good food for thought. You can capture a person expressing an emotion, or you can have the photo convey an emotion: they don't have to express the same. Generally I don't consider this when shooting, I will keep this in my mind. It opens up a lot of possibilities: capture an emotion, sometimes it will be deeper when the viewer's emotion is totally different. Background/scenery would be the key then.
 
Difficult to explain, sometimes there is a pic that makes me feel happy, sometimes sad... it's the scenery, the context, the expressions... don't know what is exactly but yes, it's possible to freeze the emotions and feelings in a single pic

leicam6132or3.jpg
 
Sparrow said:
Seems we just proved you can at least interpret some emotion from a photo, but misinterpret the emotion in text very easily indeed

Note the smiley face

<enigmatic smiley>

(my ravings here)

Yes, that would explain why you took my post literally, there’s no irony emoticon you see. The smiley was to indicate a lack of malice.

<enigmatic smiley>
Click to expand...

Exactly! you can get some sense of emotion from a photo - but not as easily from the words.
Here is a smily and wink back to you 😉 We're on the same page/print.
 
personally i find the emotion evoked in the viewer a much more interesting phenomenon than whether or not an emotion can be photographed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom