Rationale for Portraits
Julian Salinas, Photographer
When I was asked to shoot the photographs for this publication, I saw a challenge. The task of creating portraits from Zoom video recordings appeared to be outside my usual workflow and I had never worked with videos as a starting point for stills. Generally, I work with physical settings and real people, using my camera to capture that space and that relationship. As a professional, I have used digital photography since my university days. Yet, in these pandemic times, where our world turns increasingly digital, it appeared a logical next step for me to engage with “moving” online portrait material.
Because of the challenge involved in trying to create meaningful portrait pictures from existing videos, I initially considered re-photographing the interviewees. This would have allowed me to get to know them and to produce portraits that capture their different, diverse personalities. This is a process I am intrinsically familiar with, having focused on portrait photography for many years. However, this appeared not only impractical because of the difference in time and space but it would also have meant losing or disconnecting from the moment in which the interview was conducted. This led me to explore options for working with the existing video material. It resulted in a process that took as a starting point the practice established over the first few months of the pandemic by the TALON project team in their exchanges with the collaborators.
The video material posed a challenge in that all videos were in a different form and format. For example, some interviews were self-recorded, whereas others were recorded on various online meeting applications by the TALON team; some interviews were conducted with individuals, whereas others were held with pairs; and some interviewees used digital background pictures, whereas others showed their home office spaces. In all this variance, I was looking for a solution that could create a reusable and consistent “image” that accurately represented the people portrayed. I experimented with different ideas—extracting stills, and juxtaposing people and backgrounds.
In the end, after extensive experimentation and discussion with the TALON team, I decided to use three freeze frames from each interview, with each of the three frames showing the interviewee with a changed pose and posture. The idea was to create a “moving” portrait that showed the interviewee in action and that hinted at the original video source. My work then centred around selecting the three frames. Individuals were often showing unfavourable or displaying only minimalistic expressions, and I had to do a systematic search for the right moments. In addition, the selected freeze frames not only had to work in succession, but also on top of each other, meaning there had to be a sensible selection of visuals that could be displayed side by side and as a continuation from top to bottom. This proved to be more challenging than I had initially thought.
I then used digital screens to display the three selected freeze frames inside wooden frames that were purpose-built for this project. The frames were stacked vertically to create a sculptural effect. The idea was that the final picture would become something more than a collection of stills extracted from video recordings: each picture would become an art piece in its own right, with a specific expression.
The wooden frames with the projected freeze frames were photographed arranged in locations at my studio. I set myself the goal of finding a suitable background for each portrait picture. Even though I had never met the interviewees, I used the selection of the frames, the composition, and the physical setting to create this interpretation.
The final portraits reflect the complex tension of the digital and the physical—moving pictures that were translated into stills projected onto physical frames, which were then re-photographed for print publication. The portraits also mirror the translational, transformational process of the book project itself, where online education was explored through virtual interviews, which then got translated into chapters in a physical book, thus capturing a moment in time.
About
Julian Salinas was born 1967 in Düsseldorf, Germany. He has lived and worked in Basel and Zürich (Switzerland) as an artist and freelance photographer. Since 2013, he has been a lecturer for architectural photography at the FHNW Institute for Architecture. He is also a member of the Haus Oslo Ateliers co-operative in Dreispitz, Basel.
Julian attended the Kunstgewerbeschule Basel, and since 1995 he’s worked independently on photos and videos for exhibitions and publications, as well as on commercial assignments for large companies. He has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions in a number of well-known galleries and has received numerous awards for projects in the field of art and architecture. His work is part of important collections such those as at F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG. His fifth monograph, Where is Martha?, was published in 2018 by Christoph Merian Verlag.