The Mechanics of a Smile

It has been said by an anonymous photographer that: “If you photograph people in color you show the color of their clothes—if you use black and white, you will show the color of their soul.” I, for one, belong to the school of reluctant “posers.” At the sound of the shutter we tense up, skip a breath and try to forget the photograph was ever taken.

It is the belief of some Native American and African tribes that taking a person’s picture is tantamount to stealing his or her soul. I once posed a question to a photographer friend on how he coaxed his subjects, everyday people on the streets, to pose for him. “Do you pay?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied, “twenty pesos.”

It was on a recent trip from Banaue that I encountered a jolly group of old men and women by a plateau regally dressed in their Ifugao outfits. As soon as I retrieved my camera from my bag and approached them, they quickly huddled together and worked their poses. My mother had warned me earlier on the way there that these men and women posed with tourists for a living now that they were too old to help with the crops or sell wood carvings. Any amount would suffice. The only difference being that they were smiling; they were ready.

A black and white photograph is said to direct our full attention to the emotion of the human subject. This happens because the replacement of colors by dark tones supports and directs our gaze to the solid face. If we wish to preserve a subject’s authenticity, then we switch to black and white. However, we are again faced with the dilemma of knowing when or when not to take a photograph.

The scenario among friends, on the other hand, offers us no challenge. We take pictures with them and of them because we want to preserve the memory of their company. We have no qualms about our souls being stolen because we know them all too well and vice versa. Though one peculiar observation is that there is a piercing moment of silence as the person taking the photograph counts to three and the shutter is released.

Now we are slowly distinguishing between the man who agrees to have his picture taken for twenty pesos and the Ifugao men and women who wait anxiously for the next pack of tourists to come. The question of when and when not to take a photograph is indirectly answered by the two situations: some subjects have lives while others have a living. It is then the photographer’s innate obligation to respect the human being and reveal the truth, if not, a truth.

The colors of our souls our black and white precisely because we know no other way of seeing it. There is the good and the bad, the willing and the reluctant, the truth and the untruth.