In a message dated 00-10-02 12:03:22 EDT, Lucy Sperlin wrote:

<< One tidbit I remember was that looking at where the father (and other
 individuals) stood (or sat) in relation to the rest of the family is a
 likely clue to how he/she related to them. The presenter had done some
 good research, and wasn't just speculating, so it might be worth
 tracking down. >>

If you can shed some light on this presenter and the nature of the research,
I'd be very interested.  For such a theory to be valid, you'd need some
verification that the subjects posed themselves, because studio photographers
have a long tradition of directing the arrangement of groups and where
individuals stood or sat in relation to each other (see my earlier remarks on
Akeret).  In fact, although I can't prove it, my educated guess is that this
has always been the norm.  Most studio portrait photographers always have
been dedicated to ensuring sales, and a "pleasing" composition for groups is
of paramount importance in securing a sale.  A cookie-cutter approach to
arrangement, fine-tuned according to the relative heighths and proportions of
the members, combined with the photographer's culturally conditioned
assumptions, such as that the father should be portrayed as presiding
patriarch of the family, will pretty much nullify any attempt to "read"
relationships in the result.  If the photographer directed the pose and
arrangement, any chance of meaningful interpretation will be severely limited.

In 19th-century studio photography handbooks you'll find advice on
composition for portraits, including groups, much of it based on geometrical
formulas derived from painting.  This satisifed photographers' aspirations to
artfulness, and the less imaginative followed it closely.  In the modern era,
magazines professional seminars directed to portrait photographers are full
of ideas about how to make group portraits look relaxed, informal, and
spontaneous, but some of them merely represent more formulas for less
imaginative photographers to duplicate slavishly, and they're not likely to
yield images which will support psychological interpretation.  I think the
vast majority of group portraits, both 19th and 20th century, are really just
staged tableaux, and the aspects which you can most successfully
"deconstruct" will be the social and commercial conventions which inform
them--not psychological specificity.  If you can locate a body of work by a
photographer who is known to have either actively collaborated with subjects
to try to let distinctive personality show or to have encouraged subjects to
pose and arrange themselves, then you can exercise some meaningful
interpretation of personalities and relationships, but I think that with the
work of most commercial portrait photographers it will be destined for
failure.  The directorial tradition in portrait photography is extremely
strong, partly due to time constraints.  The average portrait photographer,
trying to make a living through a high production rate, has never had the
luxury of time to let self-conscious subjects, who didn't know what to do
with their hands, arrange themselves in meaningful poses or fall into natural
compositions which would demonstrate their feelings toward each other; in
fact, many try mightily to hide their feelings.  In the typical 19th-century
group portrait, everyone is just trying to look reasonably dignified and
fulfill predetermined social roles and values.

Indeed, my advice about "interpreting" the photographs from the particular
studio in question would be to avoid getting bogged down in psychological
speculation and demonstrate how they reflect prevailing social values of the
time.  You'll very likely observe an evolution over time.  Also, when you
spot occasional images which don't seem to "fit" within their period, you can
point out how the subjects and/or photographer are breaking the
rules--whether deliberately or accidentally.

About a year ago I joined a close friend and her family for a group portrait
session at a franchise studio operation.  I could tell from the way the
photographer arranged us (perhaps I should say "operator", as many studio
cameramen were called in the 19th century, because I felt she was rather
unskilled) that she was duplicating an arrangement she had used many times
before.  The fact that one member of the group was in a wheelchair obviously
threw her and she didn't know what to do with him, so she stuck him off to
one side and in the result he kind of looks like an outrigger from the main
group (it's an unpleasant, unbalanced composition).  Perhaps someone might
read this photograph as a commentary on the plight of the handicapped, and
this would have a certain amount of cockeyed validity, but it says more about
the photographer's inability to integrate him into the group and "relate" to
him.  In reality he's very much the center of that family (in my opinion, he
has a mild tyrannical streak)--and I think that's where I would have
positioned him.  Of course, I was placed as if I were the father figure in
the family, beside the mother, with the other kids arrayed, standing, behind
us, whereas in reality I'm more of a visiting uncle figure whose
idiosyncrasies are barely tolerated!  Anyone who tries to "interpret" that
photograph will be led into a number of erroneous assumptions, especially
since the position of the wheelchair is so ambiguous.  Perhaps the
photographer thought that putting the wheelchair in the center would be too
easy and obvious, but I think she was just inept.  She didn't have time to
find out anything about us, but she arranged us almost completely--placement,
positions of arms and hands, angles of heads, etc.  Any attempt to analyze or
interpret our relationships from that photograph would be misleading, and I
think it's typical of the vast majority of group portraits you'll find in the
average studio archive.  When you "interpret" portrait photographs, the
photographer is a very important part of the equation--a mediator at the bare
minimum, often an overt manipulator, seldom a passive witness.

David Haberstich

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