Portrait Photography

[rbultman]

A good portrait will capture one aspect, or facet, of a persons personality. The fact that an image is consistent with a public persona does not make it an unsuccessful image, it probably just makes it the most popular one. The image of Bogart laughing is probably not popular because it is not consistent with the characters he played in movies. A thousand words may tell more about a person than a single image may convey, but 10 or 20 images may come close.

[DrTang]

I saw this in a recent ad for Rangefinder Magazine.

"It's one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it's another thing to make a portrait of who they are." - Paul Caponigro, American Photographer

What is a portrait to you? How do you show who a person is on a piece of paper or a computer screen? How do you know in the first place who they are, and how do you know that the viewer won't have a different interpretation of who they are?

and I'm supposed to figure out what this person is all about in the shrt time I know them?.. hell..it takes psychotherapists years and years to just start getting to know someone

Anyone who says that's what they do..is more than likely showing more about themselves than any subject

[Brian C. Miller]

The image of Bogart laughing is probably not popular because it is not consistent with the characters he played in movies. A thousand words may tell more about a person than a single image may convey, but 10 or 20 images may come close.

Right, all of the Bogart images were Bogart, and I think that the three photographs referenced there were done in the same session, as the lighting positions don't seem to have changed.

"... instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context." -- Wikipedia, Cubism
"The key concept underlying Cubism is that the essence of an object can only be captured by showing it from multiple points of view simultaneously." -- Artcyclopedia, Cubism
"[The Cubists] wanted to introduce the idea of 'relativity' - how the artist perceived and selected elements from the subject, fusing both their observations and memories into the one concentrated image." -- Arty Factory, Cubism

Thus, a portrait should consist of multiple viewpoints of a person, over time. I don't feel that the Cubist portraiture really came close to that. Cubism went off track when it became centered on geometry and abstraction instead of time and perspective.

One of the things I've noticed while mucking about with the Ilford pinhole cameras is how people shift, walking across the view. Same person, with different viewpoints. The blur becomes an impressionist abstract.

[Kevin J. Kolosky]

There was an excellent piece on Malcolm Liepke in todays Minneapolis Star and Tribune. In the interview he talks about why he likes portraiture. He says "I like the emotional arc you get with people that you don't get with a car or a still life or something. You get a response. You look at a portrait in a museum and the person stares back at you."