Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
One of the portrait definitions I like the most is the following “A portrait is a representation of a particular person”. Please note that in this definition there is no mention to the medium that was used to create the portrait. It could be painting, photography, drawing, or even sculpture but, at least for me, this really doesn’t matter, what matters in a portrait is that the representation of whoever is in the portrait is a creation of the artist.
The history of portraiture goes back to probably thousands of years ago. In ancient Egypt — opposed to the more modern concept of portraiture in arts — portraiture was a conceptual attempt to portray the subject from its own perspective rather than the artist´s perspective.
Photography as a medium to create portraits has also been relevant in arts since its very conception 180 years ago. Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 – 1879) is considered one of the most significant portraitists of the 19th century, her portraits of people like Charles Darwin, Alfred Lord Tennyson among many others she did during her lifetime are considered today masterpieces of photography. Of course, masters of more modern portrait photography include people like Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn just to name a few of them.
The images included in this post are part of a series titled “Memories” referencing to those strong feelings that come to the surface of the face and that are manifested as facial expressions when we invoke strong memories, the death of a loved one, yearning for those times that will never be back, the first true love kiss, the car accident that brought you to the verge of death.
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