Through their art, good artists reveal the
nature of their subject.
By chance, I came upon a 2010 blog post by Ottawa
photographer Tony Fouhse entitled STEPHANIE + STEPHEN.
In the post, he shows photos he took of “drug
addict” Stephanie, and “power addict” Stephen Harper. Tony writes about his experience
photographing both, offering us the perspective of an artist trying to capture
their nature.
I think he did a phenomenal job with harper –
Considering the restrictions imposed upon his shoot
by harper & Co., Tony’s results are amazing.
"But before I get into the vibe of the Harper shoot I
have to tell you that his people gave me 45 minutes to set up and he would sit
for 5 minutes. So it’s not like I know him like I know Stephanie. But a
fotoshoot can be a charged, intense situation, one which provides all kinds of
dynamic and input that allow you to see more clearly.
And you walk away with proof….. "
Yes, you do.
That is without doubt the most chilling photo of harper
I have seen. Cold, emotionless, a touch
of contempt and cruelty showing in his pressed lips. Slight impatience in the posture and
eyes.
Tony tells us something more of what the experience
told him of harper's nature:
"But the way
Steph does it is, she acts, she gets in touch with some emotion and shows it to
me. Not in a pretentious way, but in a way that approaches some truth. She
wants to connect.
Stephen, on the
other hand, doesn’t act. He just stands there and is himself. No emotion, no
connection.
And that’s a
kind of truth, too."
Yes, it is.
Three years have passed since that photo was taken
and harper has since learned that he needs to soften his image, needs to appear
more human, needs to pretend that he is approachable. I doubt he would allow an independent artist
to take his photo now unless he could stage the shots to his pretend heart’s
content and own full rights of the product.
Despite his best efforts at staging photo ops to
project a nature he wants Canadians to believe he has, photos of him over the
past few years fail miserably to warm Canadians to him. They are so obviously staged, so contrived,
and harper is so very uncomfortable having to pretend to be something he isn’t.
No comments:
Post a Comment