I'm not sure why Rebecca Phipps's inquiry elicited responses about
post-mortem photographs, although if there are any such photographs in the
studio collection she described, it would be useful to know something about
this practice, and there are some relevant discussions in the literature.
Michael Lesy's "Wisconsin Death Trip," however, will not throw much light on
it.  It happens to contain a few post-mortem images, but certainly none in
which the subjects were posed to give the illusion that they were alive.  The
babies shown are quite obviously dead, especially one shown in a coffin
turned upright.  More importantly, Lesy's controversial book is a compilation
of pictures and period newspaper accounts intended to produce an impression
of the general weirdness, malaise, neurasthenia, and insanity which
supposedly gripped a particular region within a fairly limited time span, and
I don't think it will be very helpful in relation to a body of work produced
over a much longer period; also, it contains no interpretation of the
individual photographs reproduced.

I would be very careful about using Akeret's "Photoanalysis" as a reference.
It takes a simplistic approach to interpreting portraits, especially group
portraits, and I've always felt that many of his observations and conclusions
about the photographs he "analyzed" were nonsense and betrayed inexperience
with the ambiguity of photographs of people.  His chief weakness is in
failing to take into account the directorial impact of the photographer on
portrait subjects, and the photographer's relative skill or lack thereof.
Akeret is on very shaky ground when he suggests that the poses, gestures, and
expressions of participants in group photographs reveal anything substantial
about the nature of their interrelationships, motivations, and psychological
makeup, forgetting that any photographer, whether amateur or professional,
usually arranges the subjects to some extent.  A hand on someone's shoulder,
for example, is just as likely to be the result of the photographer's
specific direction as any spontaneous outpouring of affection.  Sometimes
sour expressions reveal more about the subject's reaction to the photographer
or the ordeal of being photographed than as indicators of personality,
emotion, or relationships with others in the group.

Certainly one thing you'll want to do with this mass of photographs will be
to compare them to each other to see how formulaic the photographers were in
their approach.  Are most of the poses and compositions similar or do they
vary markedly from sitter to sitter, indicating that there was an attempt to
allow or encourage the subjects to reveal something about their individual
personalities?  Or were the photographers trying to be creative and arty,
suppressing personality to aesthetic preconceptions?  Are the negatives
heavily retouched, indicating that the primary objectives were commercial, to
flatter the subjects in order to increase sales?

General histories of photography include discussions of the conventions of
studio portraiture and their evolution, so you'll want to seek those out.  On
the Photo-History listserv, there has been considerable discussion in the
last couple of years about the "smile" in photographic portraits, with people
wondering whether the somber expressions in 19th-century portraits were the
result of discomfort over long exposure times, which is a relevant factor,
although it is also true that the act of posing for a studio portrait in the
Victorian era was often considered a serious and special occasion which many
people were reluctant to mar by smiling and appearing too frivolous or giddy.
 In the 20th century, short exposure times made it possible for photographers
to capture fleeting expressions, but it is also true that the modern era
introduced a more relaxed, informal atmosphere, and it became more accepted
and popular to smile and appear friendly, and cheerful in a portrait.  In
fact, 20th-century photographers often use subterfuge and tricks to prompt
smiles out of subjects who might have preferred to look serious and
contemplative.  With an archive spanning such a long period, you probably can
make points about such styles and conventions.

I'd suggest a book like John Szarkowski's "Looking at Photographs" for
examples of interpretive commentary on individual photographs, although many
of the works discussed are not portraits.

David Haberstich

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