Ethnic Portraiture

[Scott Davis]

Manuel and Lola Alvarez Bravo
Martin Chambi
Sebastiao Salgado

[Thom Bennett]

Donna Pinckley: http://donnapinckley.com/

Contemporary female photographer who primarily photographs children. And, to stay within this being a large format forum, some of her more recent work is with 4x5 color.

[Thom Bennett]

Eudora Welty

There's a great Eudora Welty show at The Ogden Museum in New Orleans right now.

[Peter Lewin]

For two more still-living portraitists:
Dawoud Bey, photographs primarily people of color, and
Rineke Dijkstra, primarily adolescents

[CantikFotos]

Taiwanese photographer Ho Ching-Tai (何經泰) does very good work.

http://www.erenlai.com/index.php/en/...ang-jung-lung-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hohotaitw/

As does Indonesian photographer Rio Helmi.

http://www.riohelmi.com/

And for something slightly different, Taiwan-based South African photographer Tobie Openshaw has for years specialized on Taiwanese "betel-nut beauties"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tobie_openshaw/
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat.../01/2003350589
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betel_nut_beauty

[chacabuco]

Charles Freger has a treasure trove of fantastic work: http://www.charlesfreger.com/
Check out the pagan costumes in The Wilder Mann section

[Alan Curtis]

Michael
This might be off from what you are looking for but, Russell Lee photographed a lot of people whose common thread was poverty. He generally captured them making the best during difficult times.

[md99]

Sally Mann. Surprised she was not mentioned yet.
One of my all time favorites.
"At Twelve" certainly has a theme http://sallymann.com/selected-works/at-twelve
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu0m2CY_Kb0

Nicholas Nixon
The Brown Sisters is utterly amazing. I have the book. Seeing it on youtube is a poor substitute. But again, a theme.
Various images

[Mark Sawyer]

Some edgier thoughts off the top of my head...

E. J. Bellocq's Storyville Portraits are spectacular and largely overlooked because of the subject matter.

Diane Arbus' portraits of people outsider the mainstream.

Robert Mapplethorpe's portraits of gays.

(If only portraits of pixies counted... )

[Scott Davis]

Philip Lorca DiCorcia, if you're going to head down that route - he did a large series on male street hustlers in LA.