How would one of the most monumental figures in arts in the 20th century view the world through a lens? Is it even remotely possible to imagine the outcomes of his photographic portraits?
It is quite difficult to try to summarise a photographic work of an artist whose work is so different in between his artistic periods ( Cubism, African influenced, blue and pink period and so on ).
For the sake of this experiment and speedy execution, I will focus on one period that was “the most peaceful” in the artist’s life. Even this option might seem far fetched. I have decided to go with a portrait, for a simple reason that a great volume of his works are focused around portraits in different forms.
So, how should we go about creating a portrait for Picasso? The easiest way would be to make a collage something in the form of the ( Three Musicians from 1921 ), but we don’t want to make things easy do we? We want to use one frame only, a single take from a single moment.
If one would presume that after years of various turbulences in his life, that his period with Jacqueline Roque might be considered by some as his personal peaceful period but it was also defined by intense creativity and being his last muse we can assume that it is safe to focus on the period between 1961-1973.
What camera would he use? He would have probably used a 35mm SLR the Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic as it was hugely popular at the time because of its first through the lens exposure metering and having a portable form factor at the same time. From most of his work we see that he did not paint wider scenes as much as tighter compositions ( portraits and group of portraits ) so it may be safe to say that he would not use a wider focal view than a 50mm. Black and white film was standard at the time, so let’s stick with that option. Now comes the fun part. The portrait itself.
It may resemble the works of Francis Bacon it its movement. The movement is achieved with a slower shutter speed, a delicate movement to the right side of the sitter while maintaining the focus on the left eye. I think that if he would have used photography as his creative tool he might have also created works similar to those we see by Francis Bacon but less in their naked brutality but rather using the form to increase the sense of primitivism, albeit to a completely different reason but with a similar artistic expression..
Of course the above may be entirely subjective and probably far-fetched, nevertheless it is a fun experiment.