My photos with... and what is a 'Glamour' style?
I'm doing only portrait photography for quite a few years already and to me 'Glamour' is a quite confusing term trying to describe style of shooting. Actually it's so strange that I usually use different categories for my work, like 'Fashion', 'Portrait', 'Beauty' or 'Lingerie'. Even that many of my shoots might fall into a 'Glamour' section. Let's start from entry point for all of those discussion, wiki:
"Glamour photography is a genre of photography in which the subjects are portrayed in erotic poses ranging from fully clothed to nude. The term may be a euphemism for erotic photography. For glamour models, body shape and size are directly related to success." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glamour_photography
On one hand quite simple explanation, on the other... well It's quite often hard to draw the line. Let's try to follow up this sentence - 'subjects are portrayed in erotic poses from full clothed to nude'. I believe It's up to viewers imagination and photographers creativity to have model shown in full cloth looking sexually appealing. Can it be done with a simple tight dress?
This photo I made with Marika when it get's bit warmer in my city. But is it enough erotic in terms of pose? Well not that obviously, so is it mean it's more a Portrait than Glamour? Portrait in theory is more focused on a person as a human, where here it's more about it's beauty so... maybe Fashion? But fashion is more about clothes, their combination, accessories choices, makeup and hairstyle. Then it's closest to Glamour again, but this pose is it erotic enough?... well... I believe you get the point of the problem.
Maybe less cloth means more Glamour?
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This photo with Ada I made as a part of modeling agency tests. Again - a little less clothes, but is the pose erotic enough? What means erotic then? Again what's the Wiki definition?
"Eroticism (from the Greek ἔρως, eros—"desire") is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality and romantic love. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroticism
Well again pretty simple, but on the other hand pretty unclear definition. For me previous photo with Ada is not a 'sexual' pose. It however might induct some sexual feelings in the viewer, but it's up to the viewer mind how he react about more or less naked woman. For me this particular photo is more about self confidence, happiness, youth-energy. Is it Glamour? Well... maybe it is? If you are on the swimming pool do you feel sexual feelings about woman around in swimsuit? Do you need a bit more explicit pose to have them? Well it's really not that obvious for me.
Is nudity mean Glamour? Well not exactly - there are many great artists that uses nudity, but in complete different form that does not (or should not) lead to any sexual feelings. Check works of quite famous artist like Salvador Dali:
He is using women body as a tool of his creation. Where would this photography fall in? Into Glamour? For me this one is a Fine Art genre, but you could say that it consists of parts of Glamour style.
One more though of mine in this subject. I also found out some time ago a little different explanation of Glamour topic where it requires professional makeup and hair style, but not the pose. For me if you don't have a woman body in the frame and you follow that rule then you end up in a Beauty genre. Something that it's quite focused on those two elements only.
This is a photo I made with Natalia as a part of small editorial that get published in magazine like year ago. It consist of some more crazy makeup together with planned hair style, but is it sexually appealing? Well I would be quite surprised that anyone would be, but I always open a small chance of different view and opinion :)
What's your feeling about this? Maybe you have more experience in that topic and would like to share your thoughts, would love to get some more discussion going on. Thank you for stopping and reading, hopefully it wasn't too long.
It's hard to define like any art form is. I won't presume to have the answers, but I understand the difficulty in distinguishing erotic from sensual and how it applies to beauty and the portrait as a whole. I can only suggest that once an artist finds the style that defines them, they remain fast to it, while experimenting at new things to improve and grow. That's my process model, anyway.
I also trust this is how it should look like. Just do whatever you like and don't try force yourself into any genres as this makes no purpose. Problem starts only when you want to publish your work into already existing categories, then usually you have to choose one, or few - depending on the platform. I always struggle with it as mentioned in the post, but it's not a heartbreaker for creating stuff :)
i like them
Great post and well said. Different categories of photography and have many of their own subsets of categories.