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A Portrait Titled: At Freshwater Bay, in the Isle of Wight, Mrs. Cameron, whose husband was a British civil servant, entertained illustrious friends: Tennyson, Herschel, Carlyle, Darwin, Browning, Longfellow. She took up photography in middle age: a portrait titled Annie, My First Success is dated 1864. She trained her Camera on her friends; by the sheer force of her personality she seems to have intimidated them into cooperation. In her autobiographical Annals of My Glass House she describes the intensity she brought to portraiture:
Alexander Rodchenko produced many photomontages reminiscent of the style of the Dadaists, but with a dynamism wholly original: his photomontage illustrations to Pro Eta (1923), a book of poems by Vladimir Mayakov-ski, form a striking continuity, with repetition of the face and haunting eyes of the same woman, introduced in a wide variety of situations. El Lissitzky superimposed his own photographs for his self portrait, titled The Constructor (1927). It is, like few other photomontages, completely photographic in its double exposure of face and hand.
However, although a long focal length lens is mandatory, it need not be expensive. The utmost of critical sharpness in a portrait lens is not necessary, or even desired, since considerable diffusion can be tolerated in portrait negatives. Your lens needn't be in a shutter for strictly studio portraits, either. A lens in barrel is perfectly satisfactory, since you can provide yourself with a simple Packard shutter to use behind the lens. Many portrait men actually prefer the Packard to the more costly between-the-lens shutters. |
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