The Portrait
Art Form, Not Format
Not as many photographers load cameras anymore, but we all still aim them and shoot pictures. You might say, I get a bang out of describing my own photographic pursuit as hunting for big game, portraits in particular. I 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 me to reveal something personal within a two-dimensional frame, a graphically compelling composition embellished with shadow and light — sometimes color, too. The late, great Arnold Newman summed up all the hard work with his quip: “Photography is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent moving furniture.” It’s now an insiders’ cliché, but I remember laughing out loud when he said it to me personally, decades ago. It still brings on a smile after every exhausting shoot. I’ll add that, 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 trials involving lenses, lights, cameras, props, wardrobe, location, deadlines, weather, temperament . . . furniture. Sometimes the big one gets away.
