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Matinee: William Dixon's 'Face to Face'
10 June 2023
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 504th in our series of Saturday matinees today: William Dixon's Face to Fac.
Jon Mack shot this 4:35 video of Bill Dixon's recent exhibition Face to Face at the Moore Free Library in Nefane, Vt.
The images are all portraits but there are no head shots. In fact, not every one of them has a face in it.
We're tempted to call them environmental portraits even if a few were certainly shot in the studio. But that only hints at what's going on here.
Dixon has mastered the art of the portrait.
That struck us when we saw the portrait of the white-haired gent in a wet suit submerged up to his neck in some Vermont bay, we presume. Dixon had to get in there with him, of course.
But wait, there's more.
That's a color shot. The man's ruddy face is, well, ruddy. But the landscape on what was an overcast day is decidedly monochrome. As if the underwater world held all the color.
Which, presumably, spoke to the subject's interest.
Each of these portraits plays to that depth. The pose, the place, the treatment all reflect something about the subject.
Of course, without knowing who these people are, we can't know quite what the meaning might be behind showing the back of someone's head (a hairdresser perhaps?) or a hand obscuring a face (a potter?).
But there are others, like our diver, who are more obvious.
We enjoyed making up stories to go along with the portraits. So much so, we watched it over and over.
Which would make a funny portrait itself, we suppose.