the affiliative smile

I enjoy taking portraits and I am particularly fascinated by smiles. All of them! Whilst some are easier to interpret than others, not all of them represent happiness and I’m sure that this enigmatic facial expression has been the subject of hundreds of studies...

 

I’ve been thinking about trying to categorise some of my portraits into the various smile ‘categories’. I’m certain that I’ll be wrong on the nuance and I’m also aware, particularly after reading the opinion of the great Garry Winogrand, that photography provides very little context.

 

But here I go with my first. I think this is an affiliative smile - a smile trying to express acknowledgement and tolerance. What do you think?

 

Here are some of the smile types :)

 

- The Reward Smile

- The Dominance Smile

- The Lying Smile

- The Wistful Smile

- The Polite Smile

- The Flirtatious Smile

- The Embarrassed Smile

- The Pan Am Smile

- The Smug Smile

- The Mona Lisa ‘Mysterious’

- The Sneer

 

And the gold standard of smiles - The Duchenne Smile

 

——————————-//——————————-

 

Candid Eye Contact

 

Sydney Mardi Gras, Hyde Park

 

February, 2020

Done