...It's that portraits have more or less gone away. At least in my little corner of existence. Portraits used to be a mainstream thing—understood even by the general public as one of the basic purposes of photography, a major category of subject matter, the subject of books and exhibitions, and something that photographers big and little could sell and that normal people routinely hired photographers to do for them.  

It used to be that if you offered to do a portrait for free, it was welcomed as something of value. Now if I offer to do a portrait for free it's more often looked upon with puzzlement, if not something less welcome, as if to say, "Why would I need you for a portrait?" If you ask an acquaintance or a stranger to pose or model for you, young women (if you're a man) as often as not assume you're being lecherous and parents of children are as apt as not to view you with suspicion. (Maybe part of the difference is that I used to be a handsome athletic young man and now I'm an older man. Another part of the problem is that I'm an introvert and have difficulty putting people at ease, although I'm certainly not averse to engaging strangers in conversation.)

There might be another factor that hasn't changed since the old days but might have gotten worse—people are worried about how they'll look. It's not like this is new; people were shy and reticent about having their picture taken the whole time I've been doing it. But with today's pitilessly sharp lenses and resolution that's greater than that of the human eye, sometimes it's like a photo of yourself was calculated to make you look as bad as possible. People are leery. And have grown more so IMO. 

(I'm especially amused when gearheads online ask the question "what's the best portrait lens?" and everyone proceeds to discuss the sharpest, most corrected lenses. Hmm. They haven't looked at a sufficient amount of successful and beautiful portraits from the past. Sometimes extreme sharpness works in a portrait—Karsh, for example—but more often it's a liability. During the peak era of photographic portraiture, photographers fanatically sought out lenses and techniques that gave just the right degree and type of softness.)

This is my great-aunt Christine Love Johnston, my father's father's sister, who died (like a rock star) at age 27 in 1922. We don't know why or how; her story is now lost as far as I know. Note the balanced and well-judge unsharpness—that was by design, not because of technology limitations at the time. She would have gone to a photographer's studio and commissioned this portrait, or her mother Lucy did. The photographer would have been a portrait specialist or at least a photographer who did portraits often. It had to have been taken in the nineteen-teens or early '20s. She would have dressed nicely—note her beautiful hair—and he would have had a studio setup all worked out. Such a portrait might have been a middle-class or better convention, but it was certainly a common thing to have done then.

And it wasn't only photographs. My grandfather had his portrait painted. When I was young I sat for an artist who made a portrait of me in pastels. Now lost.

Portraits—photographic ones—were something I was good at and liked doing. At the peak of my photo business I got $675 for a sitting and $100 per print, and that was in the late 1980s and early '90s—get out your inflation calculator! Good money for a schlub. I still do a portrait from time to time, and I can't say I work hard at figuring out how to do more. But when I do occasionally try, it usually falls flat. These days, people take their own portraits. Selfies. They also see lots of pictures of themselves taken by others and all they have to do in that case is say, "I like that one! Can you send me that?" Done. Maybe it wouldn't make a print, but who needs prints? Family albums aren't made of paper any more. 

I'm not saying all this is bad. More people than ever are taking pictures of their kids and loved ones and having fun with it and often doing quite well at it, too. Look at the title of the post again...the thing I miss. The way it was is just something I miss, is all. 

Niches
I wonder what it's like for portrait "collectors." By that I mean photographers who deliberately set out to make a body of work of portraits of people who are eminent, interesting, or accomplished in some way, in general or in some specific field. That's one little particular niche of photographing. Recently, most people who do that try to create an archive of "celebrities," which has a specific circumscribed meaning in contemporary culture, meaning mainly actors, singers and athletes—"stars." There's no real definition of "stars" but we all kind of know who is and who isn't. That's only a subset of prominent people, of course. Any of the great portrait photographers you might name have a certain sort of person they sought out to photograph—rock stars, the rich, politicians, scientists. Photojournalists might accrue a body of portraits of people who do something newsworthy. One subset-within-a-subset I've always been interested is people who photograph photographers! My friend Arnold Crane was one of those, although he's not known now. So was Bill Jay, who was always self-deprecating about his own work but who created a fine lifetime project of photographer portraits. Of course you could photograph interesting people in any field and it would be interesting to somebody. Writers, physicists, artists, socialites, dancers, inventors, tech bros, race car drivers, rock climbers. Could be anything really. Heck, Robert Bergman, one of the rare true "colorists" in my opinion, created his body of work making portraits of homeless people! Time was when a great portrait photographer might seek out someone famous and request their cooperation to make a portrait of them. It usually worked because the famous person was aware of the value of cultivating their "brand" (as the common parlance puts it), and the photographer was interested in cultivating their portfolio, so a kind of symbiosis of interests applied. Are photographers still doing that? They must be, but I don't really know. 

There's no celebrity like a niche celebrity. I recall a physics professor who went to a big international conference. He described it to us by saying it was like all the very biggest celebrities in the world were gathered in one place. All the biggest names. His excitement was off the charts. Of course they were nobody you or I would have heard of, but to him they were as famous and dazzling as Taylor Swift to a tween girl.

If you were a portrait photographer and wanted to create a body of work of some group of people or other, who would they be? What kind or type of people most interests you?

Mike

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