Nour
This is Nour. She is a student at Lebanon International University in Beirut. We worked together on two video projects in the ten days I was with my Mobile Media class in Beirut.
My first thought when I saw these two pictures was that these pictures really capture how she is. She is very outgoing and has a very bubbly personality, always talking and laughing, and rarely sits still. She is very small but has something very strong about her, people listen when she talks and she doesn’t lose arguments. But then as I looked for a bit longer, I realized that it is impossible to capture a sense of movement or an indication of someone’s way of interacting with the world in a photograph. Or at least I am not yet capable of doing so.
Photos only capture a passing moment, so therefore only capture passing emotions. So it is hard to say whether they actually capture anything true about a person. Whatever emotion is most outwardly present in someone’s face or posture at the moment of the photo is what gets recorded. So saying a photo captures who someone is really doesn’t make sense after all. At the same time, and this is especially true with older people, the emotions people most commonly express make an impact on how their faces look at rest and on what expression they are most likely to have at any given moment. People’s most common movements and manner of carrying themselves also begins to show over time as well in their postures. Nour is a dancer, and you can see that her posture is perfect is every picture, even ones where she is relaxing.
So while a portrait of someone doesn’t capture them completely, it can often capture a facet of their personality, as well as give clues to how they carry themselves most commonly in their lives.
