ABSTRACT
The human face and body has always had a fascination for artists: some, like Gainsborough and Reynolds, painted little else. Others, such as Rembrandt and Van Gogh, painted self-portraits obsessively. Sitters were expected to be able to hold a pose, often for hours at a time. With the advent of photography such times came down first to minutes, then to seconds, and eventually to fractions of a second. When the electronic flashtube arrived in the photographic studio, exposure times fell dramatically to a millisecond or less. Quite suddenly it became unnecessary for the sitter to remain even moderately still during the exposure. In a way this simplified the task of portrait photographers, as they were now able to concentrate on the moment when the sitter had just the right expression, though they now had to learn new techniques in the control of this new kind of lighting. At the same time the quality of lenses and films was improving to the point where it was possible to use 6 6 cm and even 35mm formats for portraiture, and to make a dozen or more exposures in rapid succession, thus increasing the chance of a successful shot.
