Portraiture

Portraiture

Before cameras were used to take portraits, people would have their pictures painted. Usually it was wealthy men and women or members of royalty that had their portraits painted. They would always want to set an example and to be painted how they want people to see them. Meaning they had control of what the artist was painting. Where as when your portrait is taken with a camera, it is done within the click of a button, which shows the subjects emotion and I think has a lot more depth.

Diane Arbus is a photographer that takes photos and portraits showing different emotions to what the subject would normally want to be portrayed. She would often take photos when people were of guard making her photos very powerful. However this doesn’t always fit in with what you would you want out the photo for the specific event.

Diane Arbus was asked by the () family to take photo’s of them throughout their Christmas holiday. Most photographers would take this as a chance to show the family laughing, opening presents, eating big meals. But Diane Arbus had a different approach, as shown in the photo below. I think this is a brilliant photo because instead of having the girl laughing, smilling or doing anything that you would normally expect at christmas time, she is staring right into your eyes and showing that she is almost sad or needs to scream. 

The way I think this photo was captured was by waiting for her to stop posing, putting her gaurd down and allowing all what she wanted people to see of herself to simply disappear. In my opinion this photo has a deeper meaning, than one where the girl would be posing. Because when you look into her eyes you can start imagine a lot of things that she is feeling or thinking.