What a wonderfully instructive experience this is!
Here, in a passage from a masterly essay by my new favourite author, Janet Malcolm, is the famed German photographer Thomas Struth, describing his preparations to make a portrait of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh:
He studied old photographs and found most of them wanting. He saw the
technical mistakes, “what should not happen” — notably their distracting
backgrounds. He visited Buckingham Palace and decided it was too
cluttered. When the gilded green, red, and white drawing rooms at
Windsor Castle were offered, he selected the green room (the white room
was “too tired” and the red room “too much”) and spent a day there
making test shots.
“While I was there, I said, ‘I want to see the
dresser’ — the woman who is in charge of the Queen’s wardrobe. Because the
second thing I noticed when I looked at the past photographs of the
Queen was that many of the dresses she wears are very unfortunate. She
has quite big boobs and she often wears something that goes up to the
neck and then there is this stretch of fabric under the face that makes
it look small.” (I smiled to myself at Struth’s coarse reference to the
royal bosom — a rare lapse in his excellent English.)
The day before the
sitting, Struth continued, “the dresser came in with twenty dresses. She
was a very nice woman, and we had an immediate chemistry. I felt that
she saw me. Later, she told the Queen that I was O.K. — that I was a nice
guy. I selected the dress, a pale-blue brocade with garlands, a bit
shiny, and it matched nicely against the dark green.”
I asked if the Queen accepted his choice and he said yes. He did not
choose the Duke’s costume, except to ask for a white shirt. At the
sitting, the Duke wore a dark suit and a blue tie. “He was perfect,”
Struth said.
In further preparation, Struth read a biography of
Elizabeth, and “I felt sympathy. They were my parents’ generation. She
was exactly my mother’s age and Philip was born in 1921, two years after
my father was born.”
 |
| Thomas Struth’s large-scale portrait of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, taken at Windsor Castle, was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in London, for an exhibition of paintings and photographs of the Queen commemorating her Diamond Jubilee in 2012. When Struth was approached, he wondered, “Would I be able to say something new about people like this?” |
Later in the essay, Malcolm writes about going along with Struth to visit the printing lab to inspect the portrait:
Struth ... said that the picture was too yellow, and
for the next half hour colour adjustments were made on test strips, until
he was satisfied that the print had reached the degree of coolness he
wanted.
 |
| THOMAS STRUTH |
Then the issue of size arose. The print we were looking at was
big, around sixty-three by seventy-nine inches, and he asked that a
larger print be made. When this was produced, he regarded the two prints
side by side for a long while.
It seemed to me that the smaller print
was more flattering to the Queen — the larger print made her look
larger, almost gross.
Struth finally asked that the smaller print be
taken away so that he could study the larger print without distraction,
and he finally decided on it.
Further colour adjustments were made on the
big print — the Queen’s hands were made less red, the background was
darkened, to noticeably good effect — and Struth was satisfied.
The essay contains more details: Struth's experiences during the sitting (he was nervous, he says), Malcolm's analysis of the royal portrait ("a composition of satisfying serenity and readability"), and her take on the art of photography itself ("The camera doesn't know how to lie. The most mindless snapshot tells the truth of what the camera's eye saw at the moment the shutter clicked.").
I read the essay in a collection of Malcolm's finest writings,
Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers (author and book cover pictured above). But the essay is also available on the website of
The New Yorker, where it was first published. You can read it here: "
Depth of Field".
By the way, Janet Malcolm was in her mid-70s, in 2011, when she flew over to Germany from the U.S. to interview Thomas Struth. Just sayin'.
- From reading an interview with Thomas Struth on the Leica Camera Blog, I learned that a picture of his — a self-portrait in front of Albrecht Dürer’s
famous self-portrait (see below) — was sold at Sotheby’s in an auction in February 2011 for
502,000 euros (Rs.4 cr approximately at today's exchange rates).
ALSO READ: A
profile of Janet Malcolm, who has been writing for
The New Yorker since 1963. And "
When you have two hours to shoot ace director James Cameron for a National Geographic magazine cover, how do you do it?"
ADDITIONAL READING: "
Meet the 93-year-old journalist who still goes to work almost every day".
Vidya Nayak Appreciate your gesture of putting up this pic, Rameshanna... Teaching your male friends and cousins a lesson in life?:)
Ramesh Prabhu Well, Vidya, I know of many households where the men do not even enter the kitchen. But I also know of some households where the women think washing dishes is the maid's "prerogative".
Kakoli Bagchi Hahahahahhaa! I concur. The secret to a happy marriage is lots of time spent apart (work travel) which ensures that he pampers u in the little time u get together
Sunita Prabhu Ramesh .. May seem surprising to you .. But Prakash Prabhu IS an ace at this !! Way to go !!
Shilpa Giasotta Hi Ramesh...hows you. ..have always admired you. ..and suddenly one more quality of yours on display. ...hope you have not done this only for the pic
Sushmita Chatterjee Wow! U r just amazing sirie Thankfully I am also blessed with a husband who doesn't mind stepping into the kitchen to cook a meal for me (though he might have to refer to cook books to do that) or help me complete my household chores It's definitely a gesture that all wives appreciate!
Patrick Michael Good for you Ramesh. Sharing is caring. Actually. Am just about to clean up the loaded sink. My morning ritual! it's a good exercise!
