Portraiture

Portratit photography was mainly used by royalty. They started with the affluent people getting paintings of portraits but as the camera became more popular more everyday people began to take portrait photos or have portrait photo's taken. Portrait photography is when the photograph is focused on the person or person's facial expressions. The objectives to portrait photography are to display personality and mood of the subject or person. A portrait photograph is when the focus is on the person face although their body may be included. Also in a portrait photograph the person tends to look directly into the camera and are in a still postion, not a snap shot.

Portrait photography is usally used for peoples personal uses such as family events or school photographs. It doesnt have to have models or be put in garerllies, they are for people to have for themselves. Today, portrait photography is used for public use such as leaflets or authors photographs on the back of books.

Portraiture became popular after the daguerrrotype in the late 1900's. When portrait photography began the photographer would just use a plain background a minamal lighting from overhead windows or they would use anything that could be reflected using mirrors. As technolgoy became more advanced the styles of portrait photography grew and has become more creative. While technology was growing the photographers would become more exprimental and take photo's outside of the studio.

There are many portrait photographers, such as Diane Arbus, Walker Evans, Richard Avedon, Tony Vaccaro and Larry Clark. Each of these photographers had a different style of protraiture. Diane Arbus took many different portrait photographs but spent most of her time working with people who were classed as differnt from the rest of society. These people were dwarfs, giant, transvestites, nudiest and circus preformers. Some poeple have been known to call Arbus 'the photographer of freaks'. Arbus's work has previously been sold for thousands of dollars but it also causes lots of controvasy. Because Arubus was so quite people would be drawn into what she had to say and this made people more intresed in her work.

Tony Vaccaro was a photograher and a solidor, he photographed during the second world war and then after the war he became a fashion photograher for a U.S magazine

Larry Clark is an American photographer who best known for his book Tulsa. The book is about the young people in Tulsa Oklahoma. The book shows how the young people would shoot illegal drugs, have under age sex and were violent. The people of Tulsa were always known as good people and people didnt know that such acts would be done there untill the book was released and the proof was in the photographs. Clark says that when he would take a photo he would take it against the light and there is not a straight photo in the book.