Portrait photography has always spoken to me on a deeper level. A portrait is not just a photograph of someone, it tells us more than that. It gives us an insight on the way the live, their soul, the ‘self’, the identity, the culture, the façade, the energy… The most important part of portrait photography is the eyes, common phrase is that the eyes are the gateway to the soul; and I believe this to be true. There are a plethora of portrait photographs, and just by looking into the subjects eyes can paint the most beautiful canvas. The eyes alone can tell a story with the absence of the subject in its entirety. I find the most dynamic portraits are the ones when they are not done in the studio. From experience when someone is taken out of their native environment and placed in a synthetic one, you will never be fully able to capture the subject’s soul and essence. The best portraits are never in studio, you will always miss the soul and that’s is something that is fundamental to portraiture I believe. The ‘self’ and the identity of the subject will shift to an illusion and you will only catch the façade of the subject.
Not all portrait photographs have to be raw, there are some incredibly aesthetic studio portraits, but it always comes at the expense of not capturing the real them. What inspired me to do my portrait photography was capturing the subject in THEIR environment and not mine. When I was doing the person who I know portrait photography, I said to them take to a place that you like, I centred it all on my subject. By doing this I was able to capture some lovely portraits of my friend. Likewise it’s all about having communication with the subject. Just by talking to someone and opening the subject up can be a gateway to capture the most amazing photographs. When taking portrait photographs outside of a controlled environment you get attached to the world more, your senses, your observation, your creativity are all increased. It’s something that I had to learn myself and experience myself to fully understand the art and the beauty of portraiture.
Terry Richardson is mostly known for his fashion and celebrity photography. Terry was born in New York in 1965, he started to take photographs in his teenage years when he moved to Hollywood. Terry Richardson’s works is quite controversial due to the nature of some of his photographs. Terry Richardson’s style of work is manly snapshot aesthetic portraiture. His work is deemed as amateur due to the equipment he possess and the style in which he takes is photographs, however he is a professional photographer. Terry Richardson’s snapshot style portraiture is interesting, their quirky and tongue-in-cheek. The only issues that I have with his portraiture is that you can never capture real subject; Terry’s subjects are always performing or wearing a metaphysical identity. His subjects never elicit who they really are.
Lee Jeffries is one of my favourite portrait photographers. I honestly think he’s a hero when it comes to photography! He always manages to capture the soul and the raw essence of the subject which is so hard to do. His series of homeless people portraiture are amazing. Every photograph tells a thousand words. The detail that he captures only adds to the aesthetic of the rawness of the photographs. This really inspired my piece of photographic work than I had done.
Rehahn is a photographer from France and is based in central Vietnam. He is one of the most featured photographers of the last three years. He works with National Geographic on a regular basis. My favourite series his Eyes of The World portraits; they’re the most breath-taking and dynamic portraits I have ever seen.
