Portraiture Photography

Portraiture was originally a form of fine art. A painting. This kind of art was only accessible to very rich and powerful people, usually royalty, and you had to be very rich to have one of these taken of you.

The portrait of Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci was painted between 1503 and 1519 is one of the most famous and recognised pieces of painted portraiture in the world. The subject in the portrait is suspected to be Lisa del Giocondo, though this hasn't been proven. One of the most discussed topics of the portrait is the reason of the small smile that da Vinci captured.

Over the years photography lead to portraiture; while most portraiture is usually a stage/posed model, though some are more along the lines of street photography, but still partly posed.
One of the photographers that did this in the style of street photography was Diane Arbus. Her photographs feel like a mix between social documentation and portraiture. The models in Diane Arbus photos are staged, they were told where to stand, how to stand, but she was able to capture an insight into these people's lives. However there is a sort of intimacy between Arbus and her subjects, and her models reflected upon this by remedying the way that Arbus would whisper to those around her, forcing them to lean in to hear her.

Above is a picture of Marcella Matthaei, the eldest daughter of the Matthaei family, that Arbus photographed in the late 60's. This photo shows eleven year old Marcellain 1969, the little girl is growing up, and the face of Marcella shows the rebellious teenager that is coming out in the future.

Another Diane Arbus photograph is Child With Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park. I find this is in direct relation to a comment made about Arbus by Norman Mailer in '71, "Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child." The connection between the photograph and the comment were 9 years apart, maybe, after 9 further years of photography, Mailer felt that this photo, taken in '62, was the perfect image to sum up Arbus' career.