Identity: Post 1
A portrait is defined technically as “a painting, drawing, photograph, or engraving of a person, especially one depicting only the face or head and shoulders”. In the context of photography, portraits are images that show the facial features of subjects; through these features, portraits can also convey deeper meaning such as personality, emotion, experience, opinion, etc.
Interestingly, however, another definition of the term is “an impression of someone”, which I feel actually explains the essence of this type of photography more thoroughly. By taking a portrait of someone, we are focusing all our attention on who they are, what they’ve been through, and how they feel. We utilize the details in their complexion, the way they dress or present themselves, the intensity and direction of their gaze, and the glimpses of their environment in the background—we make use of a combination of all of these subtle traces to discover an incomplete but insightful image of the person. Portraits are all accurate, though none of them are the truth; they might show us the most intense, fleeting, and heated moments in someone’s mentality, or they might do the opposite and capture one of many similar snapshots in someone’s ordinary day.
Despite this, I don’t believe that it is always necessary to portray the maximum degree of detail and sharpness in a portrait. On the one hand, clear images that show every detail possible are able to depict a figure in its rawest, truest “form”. On the other hand, though, certain moods and personas might require using blurred lenses, capturing colors that melt into each other, or even purposefully obscuring part of someone’s complexion. None of these techniques are banned from portraiture; although not all of them are most directly correlated with styles like “real” and “raw”, iff they are used adequately in the correct situations, they can all bring out the truest essence of the subject.
Personally, I think of portraits in a more limited fashion, excluding other types of photos such as selfies,