*ooof*: The Gaze

I have noticed this before and I’ll put my neck out and say it again – I think Armitage responds particularly well to women photographers. Or is it the women photographers who are particularly responsive to the man? (Certainly the case for me *ahem*).I consciously observed this for the first time when the Victoria Wills shots came out during the Hobbit promo in December 2012. Then the Tracey Nearmy shots had us all enthralled. I briefly discussed a Sarah Dunn shot (or two???) in my post for the Armitage birthday in August 2013 and then also *ooof*ed a number of shots by Leslie Hassler.

And now Sarah Dunn stuns us with a series of shots out of nowhere. Had I not been so preoccupied with my own imagery in the wake of the Berlin premiere, I would have emergency *ooof*ed this tasty little number:

Bright Eyes, Burning Like Fire
Richard Armitage in a shot by Sarah Dunn
December 2013

Does this look familiar? It should. I certainly didn’t have to look it up separately but I realised immediately that it comes from the same source as the delicious Elvis/Jackson tease from my most recent emergency *ooof*. There are certain hallmarks there: White blown-out background, long depth-of-field, b/w. This pared back visual language works very well in our day and age of information overload and of oversaturation with colour visual imagery in general. Bombarded with photos and moving images, we can allow our eyes rest in a calm, quiet b/w setting. Not that this leaves me calm, however. Undistracted by props and contorted poses, this image hits the emotional centre of brain and body. Ok, every Armitage image does that to me… What’s the big news?

Lit up with soft light from above front right and back left, we get to see every detail of the sitter. His body pose is relaxed and still: Armitage is standing with his body turned at a 45 degree angle to the camera. His face is turned just off -camera, with his gaze going up left. With his hands in his pockets and his shoulders relaxed, he gives off an impression of calmness. Despite a lot of deep black in the image that would draw a lot of attention in a b/w image – the leather jacket, the jeans, the hair – the focus point for our gaze however is something else: Mr Gorgeous’s face. If you look closely you will notice that his face is almost completely framed. Particularly the rather straight hairline on his angular forehead acts as a frame to the face, continuing down the sides with the luscious waves and even covering the bottom corners with delightful little curls peeking behind the neck. The collar of the leather jacket finishes the frame at the bottom (our brain possibly continues the line further to the left where no black line frames the face).

However, it is the eyes that draw all the attention. Some of that is due to the white of his eyes, the only part of the sitter that is as bright as the background. But with the light reflecting in his eyes, they become a marked contrast to the stillness of everything else – where his body posture is calm, the eyes sparkle and look alive. In contrast to everything else the gaze is dynamic – looking up left , the gaze leaves the “default” position (which would either be looking straight ahead or possibly at the camera). As a viewer you can imagine that the sitter has had no trouble standing still like this – except for his gaze flickering through the studio, observing the movements of the photographer, taking in the setting, focussing and seeing.

The characteristic Armitage non-smile smile is in evidence again. This, if it is at all a deliberate facial expression of the subject, is a fantastic device to have at his disposal. Effectively what he does is keeping us guessing. His face asks questions. Do I smile? Do I frown? Am I happy? Am I angry? Am I impatient? Am I ironic? Am I a grumpy guy? Am I a sexy guy? I know how *you* are answering this question, dear readers, but the point is that the unreadable face adds not only a layer of mystique over the image but also the man.

This image unites a number of characteristics that I have noticed in the imagery that is available of RA. 1) Again I find that Armitage is particularly effective in the ovary-busting sense when he does not smile. Armitage does mystery very well. This may be due to his dark facial features – the shadow of the stubble, the angular lines of the forehead, the pronounced nose, the marked line of the thin lips, the dark eyebrows. His own consciousness may also impact in that he has been known to say that he feels his face doesn’t suit happy-smily very well. Rubbish, but well. 2) While he photographs very well in all poses, the off-camera gaze usually seems to work better on him than a direct look at the camera. I suspect that that is due to a general uncomfortableness with connecting through a lens. As an actor he is trained to ignore the “eye” of the camera. It is the one place he is not allowed to ever focus on. Doing so in the photography studio is probably breaking a subconscious rule, and therefore difficult, disconcerting, uncomfortable. While avoiding the camera’s eye, he can “act” the situation, ignoring the actual process of being photographed. Staring into it, on the other hand, means acknowledging being photographed, acknowledging the person behind the camera, and in extension the public who will get to see the image. A disconcerting thought for most of us.

For 3) I need to start a new paragraph because this is a fascinating topic that I have often pondered. I come back to my initial point: Armitage connects particularly well with women photographers. This, of course, is my own personal opinion – I would back it up with photographic evidence. Dunn, Wills, Nearmy, Hassler, Lewis, Newman Williams. But I am aware that my opinion is of course shaped by my consciousness. I *know* which of his shoots were conducted by women. And I subconsciously assume that they see him the way I do – an attractive man with peaches and smoulders a number of attributes that stand out and that need to be are focussed on in his photographs. No doubt the male photographers know and notice that, too – but they have a different visual language to women. If you allow me to generalise – men concentrate on the obvious sexual markers. The strong biceps, the narrow hips, the wide shoulders, the assertive look. Women have a wider perspective. They take in more than just the sledgehammer charactertics of sexual attractiveness. We like to observe the whole picture. And I don’t mean that in a “full length” sort of sense but as in the extension of the image from mere depiction to more connotation.

Now, today’s visual imagery – particularly because of the proliferation of cinematography – is oversaturated with the male gaze. That is, the appraising body shot of an attractive female, lingering and focussing very closely on the sexual attributes. The boob shot, basically. It has been argued that the male gaze is demeaning for women, reducing them to the size of their chests and the roundness of their bum, objectifying and disempowering them by making them objects. The female gaze certainly appreciates the male sexual attributes as well. However, (particularly in cinematography) these are usually shot from further away. While they certainly also include markers such as a defined six-pack, wide strong shoulders or even an impressive bulge, they tend to picture men with what I would overemphasisedly describe as an “air of awe” – admiring the power and the strength of the male. There is less objectification in this, in that it empowers men, focussing on a connotation (“power”) more than the denotation (“biceps”) (cf. Barthes *ggg* had to slip that in here) and possibly depicting the male as a role model rather than an object. I would argue that female photographers tend to shoot from the perspective of the female gaze – essentially an egalitarian perspective that does take in the sexual attributes but avoids objectification. However, I must admit that the whole discussion of this issue is slightly skewed – the imagery of Armitage made by male photographers possibly also avoids objectification, probably due to the lack of (potential) sexual chemistry between the subject and the photographer (assuming that they are both straight). Plus – I *am* a woman. Of course I will praise my sisters and mock the opposite gender *ggg*.

And yet I find the shots by female photographers more intimate, more telling and more emotionally affecting and effective than those by male photographers. Is that because I *know* that they are taken by women? And that I assume the female photographer approaches the subject in a similar way as I do? That she has shot this with a female audience in mind? Do I possibly *want to* believe in this more intense rapport between a female photographer and RA because it suits my own interpretation and/or fantasy of him? I would argue that RA connects more to women photographers based on the evidence that the shots that originate from such sessions are more varied in unusual poses. Dunn gets RA to do the Elvis/Jackson move, in another set of images she makes him ruffle his hair and dangle sexily from a ladder. Wills got the more unposed but varied shots of RA seemingly letting his guard down while talking with her in a chair. Nearmy manages to get very close to RA with intense, open-eyed shots of him. Beside the blander fashion images Hassler gets RA to peer through his fingers and to incline his head flirtily towards the camera. Is this due to the rapport between female photographer and male sitter? I would argue yes – but with our subject being a gifted actor, he surely could act out similar directions for a male photographer, too, couldn’t he?

The fact of the matter is that he doesn’t. He doesn’t get asked, he doesn’t do it. Or those images do not cut it in the editing process and are omitted from what the public gets to see? Or there is a different kind of willingness to cooperate at play here. Maybe RA favours his women photographers with more tolerance of such direction. Playing the gender game, it may be quite fun flirty to do some sillier more outlandish poses. Women being by and large very good at communicating, empathising and establishing rapport on a personal level, may also have more persuasive power then men. And the naturally reserved sitter may be more inclined to oblige a woman than a man with requests for poses that he might not consider for himself.

There is no conclusion – only my own personal interpretation. Only the photographer(s) and the sitter could enlighten us with their knowledge of the actual situation. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Dunn’s images are certainly delightful – varied, crispy clear, focussing on the essentials, adding another little facet to the precious diamond. I certainly appreciate what she has created.

~ by Guylty on December 17, 2013.