London portraits

click photo to enlarge

Eyes on the pavement, rucksack on his back, deep in his own thoughts and oblivious of the faces he is passing, this Londoner is typical of many city dwellers searching for a little solitude as they go about their business among the din and bustle of the capital's streets. And who can blame him: raise your eyes, look about and you can be overwhelmed by visual stimulation. Yet there must be times when, even in a city that changes with  the rapidity of London, the daily grind becomes monotonous, and the same routes, scenes, sounds and events become depressing, or even oppressive. Perhaps countering this is one of the motivations for the street art that various organisations fund.

Today's image shows a hoarding (billboard) with reproductions of individual portrait sketches of real people that was initiated by London Underground. The city's mass-transit system has a long and honourable tradition of giving London good design, art and architecture - from the elegant simplicity of the Tube Map, the iconic company logo and innovative station architecture that arose under Frank Pick's tenure as Managing Director in the pre-WW2 years, to the sponsored art of today, the London Undergound has been a  force for good in the built environment.

The photograph above shows portraits of staff of the organisation drawn by Dryden Goodwin. They are a selection from the sixty that he did as part of the "Linear" project commissioned by Art on the Underground. For more details see here.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 90mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Plates of meat

click photo to enlarge
The extremities of the human body, as Leonardo da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man" clearly shows, are the head, hands and feet. When an artist wants to show something of the character of a person it is usually the face that he or she chooses to portray. Leonardo's "Self-Portrait"or his "Study of Five Characters" are good examples of this kind of image. Through their expression, and by the lines that time etches on a person's face we can see (or imagine we can see) something of the underlying singularity of the individual.

Many painters and photographers choose to include hands in their portraits, believing that they too reveal something that lies below the surface of the person. A painting such as Egon Schiels' "Self-Portrait with Hands on Chest" clearly includes the hands in order to say something more about the person that is depicted. The famous photographic portrait of the English painter, Aubrey Beardsley, is as much about his hands and their very long fingers, as it is about the profile of his face. Of course, in all these kinds of paintings and photographs we as viewers don't necessarily see that which the artist intended. However, we do see something, and the hands definitely add to that something.

So what about the third of our bodily extremities - our feet? There are far fewer paintings and photographs of feet than there are of heads and hands, or heads with hands. It's not difficult to see why the latter pairing is rarely to be found: it requires the suppleness of a contortionist to get them in close proximity. But how about feet themselves: why are there so few images of them? Possibly because they aren't very attractive. But that of itself isn't a compelling reason. Maybe it's because they are more often hidden away under socks and shoes. And yet feet are full of character and vary enormously between individuals. Today's photograph is my small contribution to increasing the number of photographs of feet! I noticed my battered pair as I was standing in the kitchen on a warm evening. The under-pelmet lighting was throwing interesting shadows around them so I pointed my camera down and took this shot of my "plates of meat" (Cockney rhyming slang for feet).

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 20mm (40mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/8
ISO: 800
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On