David Suh teaches TikTok how to pose for photos.
May 24, 2022 10:22 AM   Subscribe

“I have to be mindful of their previous relationship they’ve had with photos of themselves. And then there’s their own self-relationship.” (LA Times original, archive.org version). Shy poses vs. IDGAF poses | Critiquing celebrity poses at the Oscars, mens edition. | Red carpet poses that aren't boring | Shy vs. power couple poses | Quick mirror selfie poses | Four strangers get a posing lesson at Disney Resort.
posted by spamandkimchi (13 comments total) 37 users marked this as a favorite
 
Here's a quote from the article.
He notes that, like many men, he wasn’t raised to think much about looking or feeling good. Most guys, he says, only have “achievement photos” of themselves — “Me and an award,” he says, “or, like, a fish.” So they don’t understand what others in their lives are seeking when they ask to have their photo taken — they see it as something rote, part of a checklist or a public performance, as opposed to a search for deeper validation and self-appreciation.
And here's David Suh's website.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:29 AM on May 24, 2022 [3 favorites]


I follow this guy and really like him. He seems intentional about using poses to express some image of yourself - power, mystique, confidence, etc - rather than simply trying to emphasize or hide certain body parts or physiques.
posted by hepta at 10:32 AM on May 24, 2022 [5 favorites]


Do you hate photos of you? You are accustomed to your mirror image, so photographs, being a true image, look subtly wrong. Look at photos in a mirror or reversed; they will look quite different to you, more like yourself.
posted by theora55 at 11:29 AM on May 24, 2022


"...being a true image, look subtly wrong."

Or get a "True Mirror".
posted by aleph at 1:05 PM on May 24, 2022


Aww, he was really sweet with the ladies at Disney Resort!
posted by eviemath at 9:06 PM on May 24, 2022 [1 favorite]


Do you hate photos of you? You are accustomed to your mirror image, so photographs, being a true image, look subtly wrong.

Nope, hate what I see in the mirror too.
posted by Dysk at 10:17 PM on May 24, 2022 [5 favorites]


I like the revelation at the end that everyone has had moments where they've felt confident, or sexy, or joyous, but they rarely if ever get to SEE themselves in those moments, even though others around them see all of those things in you. And without that ability to see yourself, it becomes harder to believe you can be those things.

I don't take a lot of photographs these days, especially not of people, but I've known for a long time now that outside of particular niches like concert photography, I'm kind of bad at taking photos of people. Rapport with your subject is something I've known I needed to work on for a long time, but David's clearly thought about it in a much deeper and more meaningful way than I ever have.
posted by chrominance at 11:04 PM on May 24, 2022 [1 favorite]


“We’ve had moments of feeling cool, self-confident, sexy. Sad, mad, angry. The only thing is, we haven’t seen ourselves feel that. Everyone else has seen ourselves feel that. When we’re angry, we don’t go to the mirror afterwards: Let me see myself be angry. Or maybe if we’re being intimate with a partner, we don’t see that.

how strange that he thinks so! because this is a very lucid description of what is pretty textbook self-objectification, the kind of deliberately cultivated alienation from the self & displaced identification with an unknown observer that absolutely typifies a certain kind of female adolescent experience, far from universal but common enough to have once been talked about as if it were. the dreaded "female socialization" of myth & legend: that oppressive, cultivated urge to yes, actually, run to the mirror and see what this emotion looks like on your face; that panicked, paranoid need to perform to imaginary hidden cameras even when it is, or it ought to be, just you or just the two of you all alone; that inability to feel without wondering what you look like, feeling.

we don't go to the mirror afterwards, not to mention during? well. some of us don't and never did. some of us do. some of us used to and then stopped.

It is not my business to understand today's young people too well, and he sounds like a ray of sunshine with nothing but love in his heart. for real. but the idea that pursuing more, more, more self-consciousness is liberating rather than a plunge back into the pit of being thirteen years old is very strange to me. I am very willing to believe that a little training in self-consciousness is a healthy correction for men of the specific posing-next-to-achievements school he describes so well, men who are so comfortable perceiving from behind their own faces that you can tell they were never shamed into a perpetual guilty concern for the experience of everyone who has to look at those faces. but as an empowerful set of tips for women in particular, as the article touches on so delicately, the feeling is not so good. learning to articulate your limbs like a posable figurine in the same standardized, impersonal, typed way everyone else does as soon as a camera swings your way is, like learning to automatically smile at everyone who crosses your line of sight, both a useful skill and a lifelong torment. easier to learn to do than to learn to stop doing.

but he does seem very kind as well as very pleasant and skilled, and I mean that.
posted by queenofbithynia at 12:29 AM on May 25, 2022 [13 favorites]


I went to a photography studio last week with a photographer both extremely kind and exceptionally skilled at teaching poses. I was amazed at the quality of the resulting photos -- I am absolutely nobody's pinup, but damn, I looked good.

The kindness really matters, I think, to many of us who know we don't fit current canons of attractiveness.

(Happy to share the studio in question with anyone in the Grand Rapids MI area. DM me.)
posted by humbug at 7:36 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


I feel a little sheepish now after queenofbithynia's comment; I think it may have been a revelation for me BECAUSE I'm a man and have not had that sort of self-objectification drilled into me, but I didn't really connect the dots to consider whether that's true for other people and how it can be a burden, and even oppressive, if it's not something you get to choose.
posted by chrominance at 9:10 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


People who are dissatisfied with the way they look in photos are already self-conscious. The moment you look at a photo of yourself that doesn't look the way you expect is alienating. Example: you think you're happy and excited at a party, but in the photo you look crazed. So you start thinking you have a weird face, and maybe everyone was just too polite to tell you.

David's point is that there is nothing wrong with your face. You don't look crazed in real life. No one thinks you look weird. But photography is an imperfect representation of reality, and it takes certain techniques to depict yourself effectively, much like how someone with no art skills is going to have a hard time drawing a self-portrait.

There are so many photos I hate because I look nothing like how I felt in the moment it was taken. Of course, if I ask my friends, they all say I look totally fine in them. But I just know something's off. I find David's TikToks incredibly validating because he's able to articulate the reasons for why I don't like the way I look in photos, like when another artist goes over your sketch with a pen in a critique.

I guess it's like fashion. Some people love fashion and use it as a mode of self-expression. Some people experience it as an oppressive social obligation. Most people are somewhere in between, where they have a vague desire to "look good". I see David's content as in line with "it's not you, it's the clothes that don't fit" - "it's not you, it's the camera and the photographer".
posted by airmail at 5:55 PM on May 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


Or, tl;dr, it's not so bad to see yourself from other eyes if those eyes are loving.
posted by airmail at 6:02 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


My father in law puts on the same thousand yard stare every time you want him in a photo. I was very pleased to discover a trick to get a good photo of him which is to ask for a “silly one!” And for the grandkids he’ll be silly and then the very next photo is a smile. A genuine one!

Look through any yearbook or collection of sports photos of boys and men, try to find a smiling one or one who looks like they are connecting at all. I feel like I’m seeing more of that these days. Bit by bit, the stranglehold of “be tough, be disconnected, never smile” seems to be falling away. Someone like this creator, while I totally identify with the critique of Queenofbithynia above, is opening up possibility.
posted by amanda at 7:05 AM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


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