Definition Post - Portraiture

Definition Post - Portraiture

Definition: A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and expression are predominant. The intent is to display the likeliness, personality and even the mood of the person.

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This portrait by Alec Soth is of a man called Joshua in Angola State Prison, it is a portrait from Alec Soth's 'Sleeping by the Mississippi' project, I love this photo because I think you can see how the subject feels, the photographer has caught him before he could pose which creates more authentic emotion, rather than someone just putting on a face for the camera.

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 This is a photograph by Thomas Ruff, he takes photographs of people in a deadpan position, this means  that devoid of any emotion. These portraits are showing us that although it seems like we are looking at someone that we can connect and understand, it is impossible to represent someones emotions photographically. The people he took photos of were completely normal and they are a canvas that we can portray our emotions onto, although we can't know how they actually feel.

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This is a photograph of a man called Robert Rauschenburg by Chuck Close, Chuck Close does photography and hyper-realistic paintings. I like his art style because it captures people mid-action, this means we see more of their personality and how they act. It isn't just deadpan and emotionless, which can look good but it is nice to see some emotion. I also like how this is lighted, the background is black as well as his shirt and then his face and hair is very bright which obviously attracts your eye to that. 

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This is a photo by David LaChapelle for his 'Shut In' collection, I think this is a lovely photograph because it shows so much happiness, this lady is doing what she loves in the photograph (drawing patterns), we can tell she loves doing it because the background of the photograph is completely covered in them.