The Image: Dylan Vitone, "Photo Shoot"

© Dylan Vitone, from the "Miami Project"

Note: To see the image at a larger size, please click here.

Dylan Vitone: When I was done with the Pittsburgh Project I wanted to photograph a place that was the complete opposite and Miami seemed to fit the bill. I started taking fairly regular trips down there to make photographs. At first I was not super sure what the work was going to be about, but I found myself drawn to the “spectacle” like I often am.

The work became more and more about the heightened sexuality that exists in our society and how culturally we have kind of created a ruse. Photographers work incredibly hard, with big productions, to make what appears to be spontaneous moment. Making love with someone has been replaced with demos on how to light and film home porn. I really did not want the photographs to be judgmental at all. Just record keeping with a little humor.

This picture was a pretty funny experience. There is a photo shoot going on where a clothing designer is making images of her beachwear for a look-book. I happened to just come upon the event and think the photo shows the awkwardness of the whole experience. They were pretty cool to me all things considered. Most of the time when I am photographing anything I look like a amateur. I have a baseball cap on and baggy jeans. So, from their perspective they have some random sweaty guy with a crummy digital camera approach them and ask if he can photograph their bikini photo shoot. (I was using a cheap digital camera because I wanted to have a common look to the images. I did not want them to look super slick. I wanted them to look like they came from the cameras that you so often see at these kind of events from onlookers). They do know me from John and you can see that in the way they are looking at the camera. I also think they are a little self-aware in the way they are engaging with one another. Everyone looking and judging one another. So you have them self-aware of me and themselves, so you have a whole lot of discomfort happening in this picture. I am pretty sure their look-book images came out beautiful but the behind the scene of this highly constructed moment was rather awkward.

Of Interest 4.15: "What Makes a Great Portrait?" on Conscientious

The 12 on Portraiture series is half-way through. The next group of photographers responding to the question will start with Anastasia Cazabon, Jen Davis, Shen Wei and Stella Johnson.

The midpoint seems like a perfect opportunity to recommend reading an article on Joerg Colberg's Conscientious from 2008 entitled "What makes a great portrait?" Colberg's article is both an expansion of and complement to the discussion generated by the photographers who have responded to the question here on fototazo. The combination of readings will hopefully further the collaborative effort of getting to an understanding of the topic, as Colberg writes as the goal of his article in its introduction.

Colberg sent an email to a large number of photographers, as well as curators, gallerists, bloggers and others involved in the photography world and then published their responses as a collective article. Responders include Doug DuBois, Colin Pantall, Amy Stein, Brian Ulrich and Dylan Vitone among many others.