There’s Less to Portraits Than Meets the Eye, and More
Photographing faces has become a means of surveillance, but a carefully made portrait can still, like nothing else, remind us of a common humanity.
Portraiture existed long before photography was invented. And for more than a dozen years after photography’s invention, it was practically impossible to make a photographic portrait: the required exposure times were too long. But the two eventually came together, and now their pairing seems so natural that it’s as though photography was invented for making portraits.