Portrait Photography, most commonly known as Portraiture, is a type of photography in which the photographer focuses mainly on the models facial expressions. The aim is to be able to capture the emotion, and personalitly of the model, and then for the viewiers to be able to judge, and read into the models expression, enabling us to understand what that person is like. Richard Avedon (a celebrity portrait photographer) disagreed with this theory, and said portraits lie, they don't tell you what the person is like, all you see is one snap of a person and would have to be able to class them as an individual. Which seems fairly accurate, how can one photo tell you what a person is like? if they're frowning, it doesn't mean they're an angry or a sad every moment of their life.
An artist very famous for her portraiture work is Photographer and Photojounalist Diane Arbus. Born on the 14th of march 1923, Arbus always had a unique passion for photography, instead of straight forward happy shots, she took a more dark and sinister pathway when it came to capturing emotion. Simply known as 'The photographer of freaks' by almost anyone who describes her, makes it pretty obvious she wasn't the typical portrait photographer, her work was distrubing!
Good comments and I like your line "if they're frowning, it doesn't mean they're an angry or a sad every moment of their life."
ReplyDeleteNow pull back from Arbus to conclude Portraiture as a whole subject detailing the journey that Portraiture has come from paintings of kings to the immersed world of Larry Clarke in Tulsa?