Identity: What is a Portrait?

What is a portrait?

For me, a portrait is a picture or depiction of a person that captures their physical features and frequently expresses their character or personality via artistic skill and interpretation. It aims to capture the essence of a person, stopping time and allowing viewers to have a stronger connection with the subject.

Within identity photography, portraits can be used to show expressions and emotions of a person and highlight their face to demonstrate their identity through a specific concept. In the image above the creator used puzzle pieces to highlight this person’s identity and shape the person. They used a portrait which can be a very useful tool to convey many parts of identity photography. In many instances, Identity photography can be portrayed by expressing their life and conveying a specific element rather than their face. These photos do not demonstrate a portrait in my opinion because they are not depicting a person’s facial features and highlight their emotions but rather show their life through other objects and images.