Yeffet

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About Close-Up

A close-up fills the frame with a face, a hand or a fragment of an object, cutting away surroundings so that detail and emotion take over. Painters found the device before the camera named it. In 15th-century Netherlandish devotional panels, half-length figures of Christ or the Virgin are brought so near that the worshipper seems to share their space.

Photography and film made it central. Karl Blossfeldt magnified stems and seed heads in Urformen der Kunst (1928) until they resembled ironwork, and Carl Theodor Dreyer built The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) largely from faces. Georgia O'Keeffe enlarged flowers until they became landscapes of colour. In the 1960s Domenico Gnoli painted a shirt collar, a parting in hair or a shoe at monumental size, and Rodolfo Abularach devoted a series to enormous eyes. Bruce Gilden photographs strangers in the street from close range with a handheld flash.

The makers