Phillip Toledano: Put Your Game Face On

"Put your game face on" is a popular saying when trying to encourage a person to go the extra mile, but what exactly does the "game face" look like? Artist and photographer Phillip Toledano has discovered and documented how it looks like in his comical series "Gamers".

Phillip Toledano is a commercial photographer. His Bio page is intentionally sparse, but based on his portfolio, it's safe to safe that his interests are varied, from though-provoking questions on the relationship between beauty and gender to more lighthearted gatherings depicted the commercial side of life.

In his series "Gamers", Toledano explains how difficult it is to find sincere expressions when doing portrait sessions, so he tried to find a way to coax out the real person behind the mask. He found his unorthodox answer in video games, where the players' expressions of joy, loathing and everything in between were absolutely geniune. Just like Philippe Halsman's Jump series wherein subjects are captured in a less guarded moment mid-air, Toledano finds real emotions when his subjects are intensely playing these games.

Here are the rest of the portraits:

Phillip Toledano's website is here. His "Gamers" series is here. Be sure to put your game face on when you check out Toledano's other works as he has an interesting and sometimes unnerving set of images there.