Part II – The Pose Has Wi-Fi Now
Part I examined the notion that people did not yet pose in the early days of photography. A seductive thought, although historically it has a rather limited shelf life. Early naturalness occasionally required a headrest and a photographer to explain where to put one’s hands.
So why devote an article of its own to Instagram? Because it is not merely individual poses that have changed, but the conditions under which they are created. The smartphone is camera, mirror, editing suite and publishing apparatus all in one. Anyone taking a photograph of themselves can immediately inspect the result, correct it, repeat it and show it to an audience. That audience’s response may then influence what the next picture looks like.
People wanted to be liked before Instagram too. Vanity is not new. Its delivery times have simply become considerably shorter.
The Camera Has Moved
In a selfie, the person being photographed is simultaneously photographer, director and editor. They see what effect a slight turn of the head has, change the distance, raise the phone or lower it again. The pose emerges through an interplay with the visible result.
That creates possibilities. No one has to wait for a photographer to understand their idea of themselves. People can experiment, change roles and decide for themselves which image they want to show. Self-determination remains self-determination, even when it occasionally pouts its lips.
Having your own camera, however, does not yet amount to having your own visual language. Even when you look at the screen on your own terms, other images are looking over your shoulder.
Duck Lips and Splayed Fingers
Take the duck face: pursed, protruding lips and an expression that can sometimes look less like seduction than a certain dissatisfaction with the air temperature.
Or those splayed index and middle fingers that appear beside the face, frame one eye or conceal it as a precaution. From the perspective of my photographic practice, this takes some getting used to. You spend your time considering how the viewer’s gaze moves through the image, studying facial expression and wondering how a hand might support the composition. Then someone parks a V sign in front of the eye. At least the focal point has been reliably obstructed.
Instagram did not invent this gesture, of course. The V sign had been part of everyday photographic culture long before then, particularly in Japan. A cultural essay from 2009 already describes variants intended to alter the apparent shape of the face, emphasise the eyes or show off nail art. Not every splay of the fingers is therefore in the service of world peace. Sometimes the manicure needs to be in the picture too. On the history and use of the V sign
Perhaps I have simply misunderstood such pictures until now. Perhaps they are not portraits at all, but nail displays with a face for a backdrop.
Other hand positions acquired names of their own as well. In 2016, bent wrists with loosely curled fingers held near the face were presented as a selfie trend under the name “T-Rex Hands”. Photographic education is gradually turning into natural history. On the T-Rex Hands trend at the time
In the past, some of these pictures would have earned a photographer a stoning at the hands of their client or editor-in-chief. Verbally, at least. Ammunition is rarely in short supply in those professions.
That is, of course, a polemic from the perspective of one particular school of photography. A gesture may look affected in a serious portrait and serve its purpose perfectly well as a playful greeting to friends. Not every selfie is applying for admission to the history of art.
What bothers me is not that people fool around in front of a camera. What interests me is the point at which play becomes a habit that replaces every other form of expression. When the same lips and the same fingers appear in every picture, the pose may eventually become reliably recognisable. The person behind it rather less so.
What Is the Image Actually Supposed to Do?
A self-image can be a memory, a flirtation, a professional presentation or a shared joke. It can say: I am here. I like this dress. This is how I want to be seen today. Anyone who asks only about lighting and composition may overlook why the image was made in the first place.
Conversely, a photograph does not become visually convincing merely because it performs a social function. Even an intelligible message can look decidedly unimaginative.
I therefore have to distinguish between different things. Has a pose been executed badly? Does it fail to suit the person or the purpose of the image? Or does it simply conflict with my own understanding of photography? My taste is involved, but it holds no historically authenticated monopoly on truth.
The Old Roles Have a New Recording Device
What does the research say? Among other things, something that puts a small scratch in the story of a completely free digital reinvention of the self.
A study published in 2016 analysed 500 Instagram selfies selected in 2014. Within this sample, women more often displayed self-touching and tilted or off-balance poses. Explicit displays of muscle appeared exclusively among men. The duck face was recorded 35 times: 29 among women and six among men. Not every pose examined, however, differed to a statistically significant degree between the sexes.
Compared with older advertising images, the selfies were more strongly gender-stereotyped in four of the six categories studied. This describes neither Instagram as a whole nor the intentions of any individual person. It does show, however, that self-produced images can readily perpetuate familiar representational patterns. Study on gender stereotypes in selfies
The advertising agency no longer necessarily has to stand beside us. Some of its ideas about images find their way into private photographs without personal supervision.
For me, this provides an interesting background to my own photographic specialisation. I have a way of representing women that I do not find in quite the same form when photographing men. I work with a particular vocabulary of posture, tension, curves, gestures and light. I cannot simply transfer it unchanged.
The research offers no personal vindication of this. It reveals different conventions of representation, not rules governing how men and women must be photographed. Always lighting men harshly and women softly would be a particularly impractical rule in view of my own pictures.
Artistic specialisation has no need of natural law.
Camera position also plays a part. A 2020 study analysed 2,000 Instagram selfies by 200 users. Women photographed themselves from above more frequently, while men did so more often at eye level. Low-angle shots were rarer for both; here, no statistically significant difference between the sexes was found. Study on camera angles in Instagram selfies
Posing does not end with the body. The position of the camera helps determine how a pose appears. A phone held higher is not, however, a psychological diagnosis. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” runs a remark attributed to Freud, although there is no evidence that he ever said it. Not every elongated object needs to be immediately promoted to the status of phallic symbol. Nor does every camera angle call for a session on the couch. On the attribution of the quotation
Simulacrum: The Self Is Missing from the Self-Portrait
My series Simulacrum originated not in a theoretical treatise but at a waterfall. A few years ago, I was standing at the Marmore Falls in Umbria. Above me, a young woman positioned herself on a parapet for a selfie. From my perspective, her face did not look carefree and happy, but twisted into a tense grimace—an expression apparently manufactured for one very particular viewing angle. I was standing, so to speak, on the wrong side of naturalness.
I never saw her finished picture. Nor could I know how she felt. What interested me was the difference between the visible effort and the impression of ease that such an image can convey. The waterfall provided the scenery. Spontaneous happiness briefly required a little work.
That observation developed into Simulacrum. The series does not document selfies. It shows people in the act of producing an image of themselves: body, pose, device. The faces are omitted. Precisely where a self-image is meant to assert identity, I deny the viewer the customary access to the person. What remains visible is the act of putting oneself on display.
The nudity serves this reduction as well. Clothing would provide additional clues about fashion, status and role. I withdraw those clues so that the relationship between body, pose and camera comes more clearly to the fore. The subject is not intimacy, but the construction of a view.
The series does not therefore contradict my defence of deliberate posing. Its images are themselves carefully staged. The difference lies in the intention: I stage them in order to make the staging visible.
I am interested in the point at which we no longer merely create an image of ourselves, but begin shaping ourselves to fit the desired image. The question is then no longer: how do I preserve this moment? It becomes: how must I hold myself so that the moment looks like the right kind of life?
That is a different task, even if both are accomplished with the same phone.
Posing Skills Can Be Learned. Creativity Is Billed Separately.
The fact that a pose has been worked out does not make it bad. Nor is needing practice a personal failing. I have taught beginners to pose with greater confidence myself, in part so that they would be of interest for model-sharing events and related workshops.
In the kind of model sharing I mean here, several participants photograph a model who works largely independently. She is seated somewhere, stood up, laid down or leaned against something. Photographers then gather around and fire away. Detailed direction is generally absent. In its place comes the expectation that something new will happen in front of the camera roughly every ten to fifteen seconds.
The model has to move from one pose to the next, hold each one briefly and remain aware of what she is doing down to her fingertips: a different gaze, a changed shoulder position, a new placement of the hands. Not mere movement, but a succession of photographable possibilities.
This can reasonably be called posing confidence: a readily available repertoire, control of the body and the ability to adopt and vary usable poses without constant direction. It also includes command of the transitions. Someone who has merely memorised ten isolated poses will otherwise have to rearrange the furniture in her mind each time she moves between them.
Practice is therefore not simply a matter of imitating reference images. It is about consciously finding a pose again, making small changes deliberately and responding to feedback. What happens when the shoulder drops? When the hand no longer grips but rests? When the head turns but the gaze remains? Such differences can be examined in photographs and carried out with increasing assurance.
I have the greatest respect for my models. Anyone who offers new poses for hours on end, worked through to the fingertips, needs experience, control of the body, concentration and stamina. On top of that comes an awareness of the light, the camera positions and the people behind them. This is not decorative attendance. It is work, and demanding work at that.
Anyone who smiles at this, or believes that a person’s nudity is evidence of limited intelligence, is welcome to conduct a small experiment: stand naked in front of several cameras for half an hour and provide a new, photographically usable pose every ten to fifteen seconds. Hands, shoulders, back, gaze, bodily tension. Please attend to all of them at once while looking as effortless as possible. Afterwards, we can gladly continue the discussion about this supposedly undemanding activity—provided there is still enough energy left for conversation.
In this setting, the model assumes a considerable part of the creative work. This makes the subsequent distribution of glory all the more remarkable on occasion: everyone has approximately the same image, taken from slightly different angles, and is celebrated by friends and acquaintances for their creativity. The model provided the poses; the organiser provided the lighting. The individual signature is recognisable from the watermark.
My barb is not directed against learning together. It is directed against the miraculous transformation of someone else’s preparatory work into one’s own inspiration, asserted after the event. The work in front of the camera deserves recognition—not merely a name in small type beneath the picture.
A Repertoire Is Not Yet an Idea for an Image
Posing confidence is a skill. It does not, however, answer the question of which pose a particular image requires.
An experienced model can reel off an impressive repertoire and still miss the intended mood. Conversely, a beginner may express precisely what matters with a single pose developed together. The number of poses available is no measure of an image’s meaning.
This is also where the connection to Instagram reappears. A recognisable sign, a pose adopted through routine and a gesture developed from the idea behind an image may look similar on the surface. They do not necessarily accomplish the same thing.
I work with models and precedents too. Art Deco and expressive dance are part of my visual language. What matters to me is whether an influence makes an original composition possible or merely supplies a ready-made surface.
You can shape your lips exactly according to a template and still look chiefly like someone who is shaping their lips exactly according to a template.
For my commissioned work, particularly boudoir photography, this means that no one has to arrive with a finished repertoire. Providing direction is part of my work as a photographer. What concerns me there, above all, is elegance, a depiction suited to the person—and the reason why “Be sexy” is a somewhat meagre working instruction. That deserves an article of its own.
Not All Attention Is Expression
Instagram merits separate consideration because old ideas about images survive there under altered conditions. People can create their own representation, inspect it immediately and receive reactions to it. This opens up freedoms while also providing ample opportunity to fall back on ready-made patterns.
Attention does not automatically answer the question of photographic quality. A high number of reactions does not explain exactly what appealed to people. Nor does an image become significant merely because hardly anyone is interested in it. The art world may wish to take note of this as a precaution.
For me, the decisive question remains what a pose contributes to the particular image. Does it sustain the mood? Does it support the composition? Does it allow a person to become visible? Or does it primarily indicate that the person depicted has seen other pictures before?
Poses can be learned. Making an image of your own from them remains work—in front of the camera and behind it.
You may even try something of your own. The phone can take it.