I went to see Yanis Varoufakis in conversation a couple of weeks ago. He was the Greek finance minister during the Syriza government and afterwards became something of an enfant terrible of european politicians. Very charismatic and bursting with a restless energy but I’m not sure I’d want to live in a country governed by him: hot on criticism but a bit vague on solutions.
Anyway, that’s not really the point of this post. This is.
This was the publicity shot of YF for the talk.* What do you notice? To give you a hand I’ll add this shot of author Julian Barnes which I snipped out of a magazine recently. Same thing.
Well, they caught my eye because they are both examples of a recent photoportrait phenomenon. The focus is on the eyes and the depth of field is razor-thin. So the ears are somewhere fuzzy in the background and the nose and chin are adrift in the foreground. It’s very unflattering for the sitter and a bit dizzying for the viewer (this viewer, anyway). I guess that it’s done with a very fast lens which gives the widest of apertures and so it’s an example of how style is often driven by technology. Come back, Cecil Beaton: all is forgiven!
(*I don’t have any copyright details for either photo unfortunately)