On "John Richards"

A 500 word piece written for a portfolio assessment. The brief asked for a piece written about an image, I chose a photograph of my Great Great Great uncle Jack included below.

Picture this, it’s 2016 and I am stood in the Taschen book store on Greene Street, New York. Amongst this tribute to the aesthetics of celebrity I stumbled upon a book called 1000 Tattoos, and flipped to a random page. Imagine my surprise when I was greeted with and image of my great great uncle Jack, the third of ten children born to a poor family in Tonypandy. I’d seen his photograph once before in my Nana’s house, and couldn’t believe it.

This portrait is complicated as it is not necessarily the sitter, Jack, that the image sets out to document. He is stood as if it was a mugshot, in order to capture his tattoos. The photographer captures both sides of Jack, which omits an important part of portraiture, his face. This makes the image very impersonal and draws attention away from the man beneath the art. As Sontag notes, as soon as you photograph something, you objectify it, but here Jack was already a work of art and the photograph just made that distributable. It’s kind of a paradoxical image, as you’re looking at Jack, but at the same time you’re not. Instead you’re looking at somebody else’s creation on his body. This creates an uncanny split, as while you are physically unable to separate the art from his body, this is precisely what the photographer sets out to do.

Despite the fact that Jack is entirely naked, there is a lingering element of clothing. It is noticeable that the tattoos stop at where the collar and cuffs of his work shirt would. Judith Butler remarks that the body is a concept idealised over time that will never adhere to societal norms, which is significantly applicable to not only Jack’s accumulation of tattoos but their reception. The best way to illustrate this is to mention that he wasn’t allowed to swim in front of my Nana and her sister and worked in a fairground where he was part of the uncomfortable tradition of the novelty fair.

In the same way that Jack lead a double life, relying on whether he was clothed or not, this image also has hidden elements. At first glance all you see is a body, you look at the designs inked on his skin and perhaps try and discern a few. But despite the objectification, the man himself breaks through. His arms are crossed in a manner that covers up the large ship on his abdomen, a pose that connotes either strength or defensiveness. If he was solely focused on documenting his body art his arms would be at his side, but by defying the purpose of the portrait he is reclaiming his body. He is also staring directly the camera, at the observer, which draws attention back to the human and demonstrates fearlessness. And it seems logical to opt for a defensive pose as he’s stood nude waiting for a photograph that will be distributed amongst the general public.

Two postcards that belong to my Nana of her Great Uncle, origin unknown, date unknown