Recognizing the power of the photo

Author: Mario Ariza

Portrait photography is not just simple point and click. Its art goes beyond the framing of the photo, and the good portrait photographer has to be as psychologically cunning as he or she is bold. Angela Evancie's '09 black-and-white film portraits of members of the Middlebury College Dining Staff, on exhibition at 51 Main at the Bridge until April 19th, are remarkable for their consistent presentation of sincere moments. Every photo in the exhibition exudes the ease and unobtrusiveness of good portraiture. Her subjects recline, but never pose; smile, but never say cheese.

Take the iconic portrait of Stephen Draper for example. The man commonly known to students as "Dr. Proctor" stands off center, somewhat hunched, with a baseball cap and glasses, and not quite smiling, as if he were about to walk out of the photograph. The complex emotional content of the frame suggests distance and departure, and creates a poignant image of a ubiquitous Middlebury Dining employee whose 21 years of service to the school will soon come to an end. The skill with which Evancie handles her subjects and puts them at ease with the camera is everywhere on display.

The portraits were all taken in a studio, a setting that, for Evancie, makes for "one of the most difficult forms of photography." "It's easy," she said, "to understand a photograph when all the visual cues are there - the right setting, the right props, etc. The man at the piano is a pianist. But when you replace the setting with a plain background, and the onus is on the photographer to bring something meaningful out of her subject, the subject becomes the visual cue." The plain backgrounds of the portraits on exhibition cannot be taken as marks of an absence of concern for the aesthetic, but must be taken as the aesthetic itself, a curious one where visual balance and movement take second stage to human emotion and story.

The remarkable portraits are direct results of Evancie's ability to make subjects feel comfortable in the studio. "Before I begin shooting, I try to get a feel for how relaxed or tense my subjects are. I show them around my studio, let them use a mirror, explain how the lights work, and just chat with them while I load film and get set up. Then I show them where to stand, we continue chatting, and I start taking pictures. There's no posing or directing - conversation is key and always brings out the subjects' natural gestures and expression. I try to narrate everything I'm going to do - move closer, fix a light - so there are no surprises."

Evancie's aesthetic is a proper yet daring one for a portrait photographer to subscribe to. As one walks about the exhibition and recognizes the faces of a College Dining Employee whom one has seen in the Ross dish room every day, or has said hello to every morning in Atwater, one wonders just how well the exhibition would function in a larger, more urban, more anonymous setting. Just as Evancie removes all superfluous visual cues from her frames in order to throw the subject being photographed into relief, this reviewer wonders just how well her focus on emotion and character would fare in some place where viewers are not privileged with such ready-made connections to the subjects being photographed. A good portrait does more than just capture the essence of a subject. A good portrait is supposed to tell a story. This reviewer, though a great admirer of Ms. Evancie's work, is unable to determine just how much story they do tell, if only because the faces in the portraits are so recognizable.