The Portrait
Art Form, Not Format
Not as many photographers load cameras these days per se as we used to, but we all aim them and shoot pictures. I suppose I get a bang out of describing my pursuit of photographs as hunting for big game — portraits in particular. I get close for a good clean shot — for rapport, not just proximity, and bag my quarry with a four-by-five instead of a thirty-aught-six. But I still hang their heads on a wall to admire like trophies.
The memorialization of a deliberate encounter with a human being — in one shot, so to speak —epitomizes the hunt. When it goes well, it’s because the subject has allowed the photographer to reveal something personal — it could be about either of them or both of them — within a two-dimensional frame, a graphically compelling composition embellished with shadow and light. Despite one’s best attempts to prepare in advance, any photoshoot can go sideways and like a MacGyver episode it becomes necessary to solve a cascade of unexpected challenges involving lenses, lights, cameras, props, wardrobe, location, deadlines, weather, temperament. . . Sometimes the big one gets away.
More than mere illustrations of interesting people or handsome faces, portraiture is about making allusions to character, a human persona. An adept portrait photographer tries to show as much about what someone does, often professionally, as…
