Our definitionS of 'portrait'

[lenser]

Vaughn, Your post took my mind back to what is perhaps the greatest portrait ever made on film, Karsh's brilliant visual essay in a single image of cellist Pablo Cassals.

With his back to the camera there is no face to portray and yet it is the definition of the man and his place in the world of music forever. Incredibly powerful and complete communication.

[Vaughn]

And locally, I just saw his portrait of Warhol (w/ paintbrush) -- 20x24 or so. magical

His portrait of Pablo Cassals reminds the viewer that we can only look thru a small window of understanding when contemplating such talent. That is what I bring out of the image.

[sun of sand]

Hey, dude
Lenser

If you operated a successful portrait studio winning many awards and whatnot and find the quality of the portraits on this site to not always be very high

WHY DON'T YOU HELP FIX IT
by
teaching us
elements of design, controlled lighting, meaningful expression, and at least a reasonable attempt at conveyance of the personality of the subject.


no offense, Lenser
but


FKN DUHHHHHHHHHH

PLEASE
help
make this shit fun

[sun of sand]

hero worship for all of whom devoted tremendous energy towards creativity


come on, man
allow us to worship you a little
otherwise

fail


Irememberedthatyoubeafemaleso
COME ON MAN

[lenser]

Sun of Sand,

I have no need or desire to be "worshipped", but if you want to see some of my portrait work, visit my website. You are welcome to make of it what you will. I am sure that to some it might be satisfying and to others just documents. So be it. My clients were delighted which was all that mattered.

This thread isn't at all about me other than my desire to seek out and understand what each of us considers a portrait to be. My mention of my business background was and is only to establish that I've got a history in doing portraits and a love of seeing them done in a certain level of creativity and communication regardless of style. As I said in the opening post...."big whoop". That is only very marginally relative to my desire to learn what each of us means by 'portrait'. I am out to be educated, not held up as any kind of example.

The fact that I only respond to a small portion of the images as being my comfort zone of what a portrait is, is exactly what this search is all about.....what makes the images that I respond to as only a snapshot....be a portrait in the eyes others. I'm out to understand and maybe to grow into a wider comfort zone.....or maybe not....I need input.

As to teaching, I'm not sure I'm worthy, but I'll be glad to guide anyone who's interested toward some of the sources that I was lucky enough to find, learn from, and follow.

As to "make this shit fun"......If you're not finding it fun, why are you here?


And please explain the relevance your last notation of "Irememberedthatyoubeafemaleso" and what you are trying to say with it. Obviously it breaks down to.....I remembered that you be a female so...... but after that, you lost me.

Now, back to the original question, Sun of Sand........what is a portrait to you?!

[Monty McCutchen]

Like many here I enjoy the monthly threads immensely. Portraiture for me is many things--that is why it is so alluring and remains my favorite form of photography. It can be what many have noted here-- a straight representation of an individual and when done well can say much about the individual both physically and psychologically. One of my favorite uses of portraiture is that it can be staged or directed as metaphor to represent something larger than the individual, something that touches and comments on our limits, and the inverse, hope of a culture or even larger into our very nature as humans. It can say much about the photographer as well, sometimes intentionally and sometimes intuitively. Portraiture at its best for me is a balance among all of these things in which the notes get hit so that the individual is honored and something larger gets touched upon. Of course I fail at that balance far more often than I succeed but therein lies the challenge and why I keep coming back to it again and again. When I see others succeed at it though there is no greater inspiration to get back under the darkcloth and take another run at it.

Monty

[Kevin J. Kolosky]

I too used to do a lot of "portraits". I didn't have an award winning studio, but a lot of people over the years paid me a lot of money to make an image of them that they liked for whatever their reasons were for liking it. I paid attention to things like which side of their face looked better, whether they were heavy or not (and what I could do about it) and how I set up lights if I was using lights, or how they were standing or sitting or "posed" with regard to the natural light.

I don't think one can measure the value of a portrait from only one side of the camera.
The photographer has his/her reasons for making the image, and the person being portrayed has their reason for having the image made, or for allowing the photographer to make the image if it was the photographers idea to do so.

I don't doubt that many photographers want their portraits to show something of the person, (more than just a record), in order for the portrait to be successful. And I suspect that many people who have portraits made want the portrait to show something of them. But I also think that most people want their portrait made as a record because they want to either remember, or want others to remember, who they are and who they were. In other words, the portrait isn't about the portrait, its about the person. Its how they looked at a certain point in time, and what they were doing at that time in their lives, etc. It can be more for sure. For example, if you put a physician in a suit coat and make a portrait of him/her against a canvas background you have a portrait of a person who some people might know is a physician, but if you put that same person in a set of scrubs and put the person in an operating suite and make a good image you have told something of the person. But its still about the person.

Nevertheless, whenever these discussions come up, I find myself ALWAYS going back to Ansel Adam's explanation of a photograph (any photograph) that was given to him by Alfred Stiegletz, becuase I think it is the ultimate explanation.

He said something like this (my words are not exact) "I go out in the world and I see things that interest me. I may want to show others what I saw and felt, so I make photographs. I give those photographs to you, hoping that you feel something of what I felt when I made the photograph."

In other words, I think that if one is going to make portraits, or any type of meaningful photographs, one needs to let them live on their own merits, realizing that their attempt to communicate was NOT BY WORDS IN THE FIRST PLACE, BUT RATHER BY A PHOTOGRAPH, and let it lie there.

There are no truly great photographs in the sense that everyone believes so. Each photograph is evaluated by each person who sees it, depending on their life, their experience, their interests, their education, their knowledge, their outlook, and etc. Very subjective indeed. I think an "award" is when a person is fortunate to have more than one person subjectively agree on something.

But sometimes a photographer gets lucky because the person who looks at the photograph gets the same feeling as the person who made it without the need to say anything. And then the photographer succeeded.

[Harold_4074]

Is it just a face or person in the field of view regardless of structure or image quality, or should there be elements of design, controlled lighting, meaningful expression, and at least a reasonable attempt at conveyance of the personality of the subject.


The key element would seem to be the last one: an attempt to convey a sense of personality or (I would add) character. How this is done---lighting, perspective, setting---is open to unlimited exploration. Snapshots fall outside this interpretation because they implicitly depend on luck rather than a deliberate attempt (although this gets hazy in the case of "journalistic style" photography).

To illustrate the distinction between a portrait and "any picture of a person", consider a professional model or actor, made up and costumed to the point of unrecognizability. The picture would be a portrayal of the character but not a portrait of the person inside. To be sure, as part of an essay or collection, it might add to an understanding of the person, but as a standalone image, if the viewer cannot identify the subject it is arguably not a portrait.

That having been said, I think the mix of images in the portrait threads is just fine; I can appreciate portraiture, and enjoy the rest for whatever it is. After all, how can I be sure that a sensitive portrait of an intriguing subject is not just a superbly executed image of a model who has the talent to portray someone else?

[William McEwen]

I ask this question when I teach, and it's amazing the number of people who have no idea or have some sort of wacky idea about capturing the soul and such nonsense.

I go with Avedon's simple definition: A portrait is a picture of a person who knows he or she is being photographed.

It's no more complicated than that.

[Jay DeFehr]

William,

It certainly can be more complicated than that. Avedon's (and yours, apparently) definition makes no distinction between a paparazzi photo, an arm's length cell phone photo, and his own photos (or yours).



Is the above a portrait? By Avedon's definition, it is, but of whom? Presumably, everyone in the photo knew they were being photographed, so it meets both criteria.

I think portraiture is worthy of careful consideration, and notions of "capturing the soul", while perhaps overly poetic, are more than nonsense. I'm glad my teachers were more thoughtful.