I went to see Yanis Varoufakis in conversation a couple of weeks ago.  He was the Greek finance minister during the Syriza government and afterwards became something of an enfant terrible of european politicians.  Very charismatic and bursting with a restless energy but I’m not sure I’d want to live in a country governed by him: hot on criticism but a bit vague on solutions.

Anyway, that’s not really the point of this post.  This is. 

 This was the publicity shot of YF for the talk.*  What do you notice?  To give you a hand I’ll add this shot of author Julian Barnes which I snipped out of a magazine recently.  Same thing. 

Well, they caught my eye because they are both examples of a recent photoportrait phenomenon.  The focus is on the eyes and the depth of field is razor-thin.  So the ears are somewhere fuzzy in the background and the nose and chin are adrift in the foreground.  It’s very unflattering for the sitter and a bit dizzying for the viewer (this viewer, anyway).  I guess that it’s done with a  very fast lens which gives the widest of apertures and so it’s an example of how style is often driven by technology.  Come back, Cecil Beaton: all is forgiven!

(*I don’t have any copyright details for either photo unfortunately)