PORTRAITS: FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND A FEW STRANGERS

A portrait!  What could be more simple and more complex,
more obvious and more profound.

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Charles Baudelaire

In my lexicon a portrait is an image made with the cooperation or at least consent of the subject and is intended to represent and identify that person as an individual.   A portraits can be as mundane as yearbook mug shots, as contrived and expressive as Arnold Newman's "Stravinsky", as formal and elegant is Karsh's "Pablo Casals", as cool and intellectual as Cartier-Bresson's "Jean-Paul Sartre", as personal and connected as Renate Ponsold's "Hedda Sterne" or (I hope) my own.

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Frank Horvat, one of the better photographers of which you have likely never heard, said that he regretted that he had not done more portraits in his long career.  Me, too.