Art & Portraits

A portrait is a work of art that documents the likeness of a person or creature that’s alive or has been alive. In fine art, in particular, portraits are pieces of artwork, which can be photographs, painting, sculptures, or any other portraiture of a human being, often with the face of the person as the central theme.

The subject of a portrait art can be an individual or a group, such as a team or family. The most common types of portrait works of art include self-portraits (portraits of the artists by the artists), group portraits, and the classic portrait of a single person.

They usually depict the subject either full-body, half-length, or head & shoulders (aka passport portraits). And they can be figurative, abstract, or realistic.

Thomas Ruff’s portraits & his unique signature style

Documentary photography, Photography / 3 minutes of reading
Thomas Ruff is a well-known photographer from Düsseldorf, Germany. He was born in 1958 and had a passion and interest in photography from childhood. Soon after Ruff got a camera, he attended a class to learn fundamental photography skills. He was able to understand the basics and become a professional photographer within a short period. …

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Why was Sally Mann’s Immediate Family so controversial?

Documentary photography, Photography / 10 minutes of reading
Immediate Family is a photography book produced in 1992 by Sally Mann. The groundbreaking and controversial book was published by the international quarterly journal Aperture and is made of 65 duotone portraits. The book features exclusively Mann’s three children, Virginia, Jessie, and Emmett, who are also on the book’s front cover. Thirteen of the images …

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Juergen Teller’s Go Sees – Fragile faces of the fashion industry

Documentary photography, Photography / 4 minutes of reading
Juergen Teller is a UK-based German fine art and fashion photographer. Throughout his career, Teller often blurs the lines between his personal and commissioned works in his campaigns, publications, editorials, and exhibitions. Beginning in May 1998, Teller started to take pictures of his project Go Sees, taking over 462 snaps from the doorway of his …

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Danila Tkachenko: How hermits live in the Russian wilderness

Documentary photography, Photography / 6 minutes of reading
Danila Tkachenko (b. 1989) is a Russian visual artist, specializing in the field of documentary photography. He is known for winning the World Press Photo prize for his series Escape. Tkachenko gained a degree in documentary photography from the notable Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia. Escape is a series about individuals who have disassociated …

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Cindy Sherman - Untitled Film Still #43, 1979 feat

Cindy Sherman’s Untitled film stills – Her groundbreaking self portraits

Photography / 10 minutes of reading
Cindy Sherman was born in 1954 in New Jersey. She grew up in Long Beach, immersed in the television and film culture of the era. This period was shaped by nuclear war worries, capitalism, and the growing blitz of images selling all sorts of commercial products, including cigarettes, washing machines, bras, cars, and so on. …

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Zanele Muholi’s brave project Faces and phases

Documentary photography, Photography / 5 minutes of reading
Zanele Muholi was born on 19 July 1972 in the South African city of Durban. Muholi is a self-proclaimed visual activist rather than an artist. She focuses on increasing the visibility of black lesbian, gay, transgender, and intersexual persons. Muholi researches and documents the stories of hate crimes against the LGBTQI community. She hopes to …

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Richard Avedon’s famous beekeeper portrait – The story behind

Documentary photography, Photography / 7 minutes of reading
Richard Avedon was an American fashion and portrait photographer born on May 15, 1923. According to an obituary published in the New York Times, “his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America’s image of style, beauty, and culture for the last half-century.” Richard Avedon was passionate about theater from his early age. He attended the …

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Stephen Dupont’s Afghanistan photos – Live In the warzone

Documentary photography, Photography, War Photography / 4 minutes of reading
Australia has a couple of documentary photographers and Stephen Dupont is one of the most renowned and awarded. He’s also a photojournalist that has participated in several risky photographic scenes. He has an edge over the world, focusing on producing extraordinary photo essays from some of the most dangerous countries, such as Afghanistan. In his …

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Garry Winogrand’s Women are beautiful – 50 years later

Documentary photography, Photography, Street photography / 7 minutes of reading
New York native born Garry Winogrand (b. 1928) is known to be the pioneer of street photography. In his Women are Beautiful series, he walked the streets of the United States and captured women in photography. The photographs were in quick and precise timing and through different angles. Winogrand picked the right period for his …

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Pablo Picasso’s Old Guitarist – Everything you need to know

Paintings / 8 minutes of reading
Pablo Picasso was one of the foremost and persuasive artists of the 1st half of the 20th century. Primarily associated with pioneering a movement known as Cubism, he also made major contributions to surrealism, symbolism and a range of other classical styles that persisted during the 1920s. Unlike many other painters of his time, Picasso …

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