When a person stands in front of a camera, they adopt the posture that we all know: hands on the waist, one foot forward, chin raised, a smile, head slightly tilted.
It's about a posture. Faked. It has nothing to do with the person portrayed, because all people adopt the same pose: it is "the pose", without identity. We can say that posturing means pretending to be what people expect you to be, not what you really are.
The nature of the people to be portrayed varies. Some are fresh, others are shy, others are daring, others are insolent, others are rowdy. Detecting the idea that defines the person, giving it polish and making it appear attractive in the image is the idea that gives meaning to the portrait without a pose.
People are also time. Our expression varies at one moment in life or another. (Self-portrait with residence in a gray-mega-city).
Photography without a pose speaks to the viewer. It is not hollow.
Photography without a pose is a distracted photo that engenders the essence of the person portrayed.
The essence of the sitter usually hides in its intimate folds.
The photographer must transform into a diver and immerse himself in the self in front of him, not in himself (he is invisible).
For each person the photographer finds a different code: soft grays, high key, exaggerated color, closed or very open shots, placing the camera up, down, to the side...
Know the ways to open channels for the sitter to express themselves.
Stage them in the place where they feel close to the environment to which they belong and pay attention to the small details (the man in the portrait is her husband).
Pour them into their world and extract from them the maximum humility, that which strips their soul.
Expressive portraits, so expressive that the observer needs to give a response to the sitter.
Beauty is also hidden (perhaps above all) in secrecy. Only the sitter knows the identity of the woman in the photo. When she stands to look at the image of her hanging in her house, it is her twice.
Sometimes the essence multiplies.
And observe the multiple senses in which we find ourselves immersed. Pride or simplicity? Chaos has its own beauty; Chaos is movement.
No one would define the character of the sitter as languid, timid, lost, even immersed in doubt.
The portrait, like any artistic photograph, must offer the most important information about the person portrayed. There is nothing sadder than photo captions that explain what you see.
Xisco Fuster, fotógrafo