I like your analysis too. Very insightful. Do you have any idea how this compares with previous portraits? Were they generally photographed or painted? I’d love to get more of a feel for the history…

I don’t know if the photographer was going for a symbolic illustration of the First Presidency hierarchy (Eyering, as First Counselor, standing taller than Uchtdorf, the Second Counselor), or if it was just an attempt to place the faces in a more aesthetically pleasing configuration, but either way, Uchtdorf looks shorter than normal, and Eyering looks taller than normal.

The background hurts the image. The floor-to-ceiling dark wood paneling (combined with the matching dark suits) gives it a stodgy law firm feel, and the lack of decorations on the wall, and completely empty tables with no chairs, makes the scene seem artificial and unwelcoming.

There is a lot of unused space between the figures and the edge of the image, and that adds to the overall feeling of sparseness and artificiality by making the figures seem grouped unnaturally close together. Vertical lines on either side of the grouped figures, formed by the wood paneling and table legs (and strengthened by the outer edges of the figures themselves) seem to be holding the men in the middle of the image.

The image is very bottom-heavy. Monson is very close to sitting on the bottom edge of image, and the bottom is the only place where a figure leaves the picture plane. The lines created by the tables, the wood paneling, Monson’s chair, and all of the hands make the bottom 1/3 of the image very dense and busy compared to the top, and Monson’s seated figure seems kind of trapped within it all.

None of them seems very happy either.

-JV

-JV