Tree Portaits. Plants with personality.
posted by dame on Sep 2, 2009 - 13 comments

"I photograph people who skirt the edges of things; people whose connection to the broader flow is murky or obscured. Mistaken as more, less or different than they are; they aren’t really seen and don’t really belong. That’s everyone sometimes; but some more often. I try to establish a line for a moment. I hope to connect. And I see the most beautiful and the most heartbreaking things."
posted by parudox on May 10, 2009 - 34 comments

Extravagant Crowd - Carl Van Vechten’s Portraits of Women and Photos of African Americans. Previous post by ND¢: Creative Americans: Portraits by Carl Van Vechten 1932-1964. Also, public domain works from Wikimedia Commons. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive on Mar 22, 2009 - 3 comments

Danish photographer Simon Høgsberg has made several updates since we last visited, including Faces of New York and The Low Fat Diaries. Digital Photography School interviews Høgsberg about his latest project We're All Gonna Die - 100 Meters of Existence.
posted by netbros on Feb 16, 2009 - 6 comments

Aino Kannisto 's beautifully composed photographs of intimate moments feel more like film stills than portraits. [via] [more inside]
posted by grapefruitmoon on Jan 30, 2009 - 19 comments

Kimiko Yoshida - Self-Portraits. [Via]
posted by homunculus on Jan 26, 2009 - 8 comments

Tableaux: In 1994 Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek made a series of 12 photographs of have gabbers and put the pictures in a tableau. They've been making tableaus of types of people for 14 years now and it's all on their site. Some random examples: gabber bitches Rotterdam 1996, football supporters Rotterdam 1997, smas Rotterdam 1997, scream Beijing 1999, bundaboys Rio de Janeiro 2000, skins Rotterdam 2002, girls on their first communion Maastricht 2006, retired Dutch men, proper girls Rotterdam 2006, yupsterboys New York 2006, yupstergirls New York 2006, pin-ups London 2008, city girls London 2008, hipsters Rotterdam 2008, flexmanagers Rotterdam/Paris 2008, the girls of the affluent 7th district of Paris 2008, geeks in London 2008 [more inside]
posted by jouke on Nov 1, 2008 - 51 comments

Portraits of Phone Sex Operators by Phillip Toledano.
posted by chunking express on Jun 11, 2008 - 55 comments

Bert Teunissen - Domestic Landscapes. Photographs of (mostly) senior citizens in their living rooms and kitchens. [more inside]
posted by ceiriog on Mar 25, 2008 - 17 comments

La Real Frida offers beautiful film footage of Frida Kahlo.* Beyond her own self-portraits, some of the most iconic images of Frida are portraits by her 10-year lover, photographer Nickolas Muray. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive on Feb 25, 2008 - 26 comments

Stereotypes are oddly addictive. Don't miss the earlier editions.
posted by desjardins on Feb 2, 2008 - 8 comments

Not all portrait photography studios are equal. "Total frickin' awesomeness from Olan Mills, Sears and other fine portrait studios."
posted by Astro Zombie on Dec 30, 2007 - 98 comments

Face Your Pockets. "Our goal is to not only bring all these objects into light but show the owner of them. During the scanning process it is recommended not to open your eyes."
posted by Soup on Dec 3, 2007 - 20 comments

It's only a paper moon - a charming vintage photo collection. (via recogedor)
posted by madamjujujive on Sep 21, 2007 - 31 comments

Incredibly expressive portraits of apes and monkeys by photographer Jill Greenberg whose pictures of crying babies raised heckles last year.
posted by Kattullus on Sep 17, 2007 - 71 comments

Portraits of rural Russians by the photojournalist Pavel Bezrukov. He is born in 1962, and started with photography as a hobby. Currently freelancing as a photo correspondent for the Moscow-based Orthodox magazine Foma. Some more samples of his work can be found at Orthodoxy Photo.
posted by Harald74 on Aug 7, 2007 - 22 comments

365 Portraits, 365 audio pieces, 365 speculative fiction pieces, 365 plays. All because one a day is good for the soul.
posted by TNLNYC on Jul 16, 2007 - 5 comments

Twin Days. Portraits and snapshots from the annual Twin Days in Twinsburg, Ohio. (Other multiples permitted.)
posted by The corpse in the library on Jul 15, 2007 - 15 comments

Wallace Seawell's portraits virtually created the classic Hollywood look.

Obit with small gallery.

More photos via Google Images.
posted by The Deej on Jul 8, 2007 - 11 comments

Photographs of the dancers, actresses, cafe-life figures and prostitutes who were the subjects of Toulouse Lautrec's paintings, including such luminaries as Sarah Bernhardt, "La Goulue" (Louise Weber; remember this?), and Jane Avril, who was the model for this last, iconic, Lautrec poster. View pages of the art matched up with photos, here, here, and here, and go to this page to rummage around in even more collections that include photos of Lautrec, his friends and family, street and location scenes, and lots of other tidbits. [Spanish language site; NUDITY]
posted by taz on Jul 5, 2007 - 10 comments

Since I was only a child, Arnold Newman (gallery; another gallery) (obituary) has been my favorite photographer. He specialized in "environmental portraiture," carefully posing his subjects in surroundings that spoke to their personalities. He usually spent hours or days meticulously planning every aspect of the shot, and not always to make the subject look good. Many of his photos became the definitive photograph of the person. I hope one day to make even one photograph that comes close to what he was able to do.
posted by The Deej on Feb 3, 2007 - 15 comments

There are about 250,000 centenarians alive today, including several hundred "supercentarians" aged 110+ years. Jerry Friedman, founder of Earth's Elders Foundation, has spent the past four years on a landmark project to introduce the world to the oldest people on earth. And in a similar endeavor, photographer Mark Story has been capturing portraits and stories of people from around the globe who are Living in Three Centuries.
posted by madamjujujive on Dec 4, 2006 - 16 comments

Did you know that some of the most famous paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Degas, and Toulouse Lautrec were based on photographs? While some impressionists and post-impressionists publicly disparaged photography as mechanical, many others were using it as their secret weapon. The relationship between the two arts was complex and intertwined. (And turning the tables, check out this contemporary Russian woman who is recreating several famous paintings in staged photographs.)
posted by madamjujujive on Nov 12, 2006 - 27 comments

Arthur Grace has a distinguished career as a photojournalist who works in black and white. Although not limited to U.S. work, he excels in Americana. His portfolios are fun to surf - here's a sampling that I liked: window washer, the Hatt family of Maine, Cheer Squad, and Prisoner, Adelaide Jail. Oh, and whatever you do - don't miss the Show Dogs, heh. [more]
posted by madamjujujive on Aug 13, 2006 - 9 comments

Burned: a photoset on Flickr "In 2001 I met a burn survivor who allowed me to photograph her. She told me that she wanted to be photographed so that people could stare at her without feeling embarrassed. It was such an extraordinary experience that a few months later I flew to a burn conference and set up a makeshift studio in a hotel room, and asked people to let me know if they would like their portraits made. I was astonished at how many people did. What I learned from this extraordinary experience was that every burn survivor has a tale of courage to tell, and that the burns have their own eerie beauty." Amazing, unsettling, inspiring.
posted by mathowie on Jun 30, 2006 - 48 comments

Their task may be depressing, but the generosity of their work is inspiring and hopefully thereputic. The photographers who are working with Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep provide their services on a volunteer basis to help families over come the grief of losing an infant. If you're a professional photographer interested in being involved, they're seeking volunteers.
posted by blaneyphoto on Jun 7, 2006 - 24 comments

Dora Maar was immortalized by Picasso in many portraits, one of which is up for auction this May. Tho many are familiar with her face, fewer are aware that she was a respected surrealist photographer in her own right. An exhibit at the Musee Picasso in Paris documents the stormy and artistically rich decade of their relationship via the contents of Dora Maar's estate.
posted by madamjujujive on Feb 26, 2006 - 9 comments

Wrestling with Diane Arbus "She set up no lights, just pulled out her Rolleiflex, which was half as big as she was, checked the aperture and the exposure, and tested the flash. Then she asked me to lie on the bed, flat on my back on the shabby counterpane. I did as I was told. Clutching the camera she climbed on to the bed and straddled me, moving up until she was kneeling with a knee on both sides of my chest. She held the Rolleiflex at waist height with the lens right in my face. She bent her head to look through the viewfinder on top of the camera, and waited".
posted by matteo on Oct 8, 2005 - 25 comments

Faces of Science, a collection of portraits of scientists is on display at the New York Academy of Sciences through Oct. 14. (Click the 'View Gallery' link underneath the bookcover). Mariana Cook, who took the portraits, has also had them displayed in The Guardian, and at the BioAgenda Institute (where they scroll by to the left of the screen). [Also be sure to check out the previous webgalleries at the NYAS. The Art of Science Fiction, and Hothouse Contemporary Floras are both good examples of their cool shows, as is One of a Kind.]
posted by OmieWise on Sep 28, 2005 - 4 comments

Fazal Sheikh's photographs have documented the plight of refugees in camps across Central and East Africa and the Middle East. However, his photographs are distinctly different from the images of refugees we commonly see in printed news articles. Sheikh's photographs implicitly assert that the individual refugees share humanity with their oppressive rulers. He does so by depicting the individuals in portraits rather than as victims of a social and political drama. Sheikh, an American citizen, was just awarded the Grand Prix International Henri Cartier-Bresson.
posted by matteo on Jun 24, 2005 - 5 comments

Simon Hoegsberg's latest project involved stopping passersby and asking what they were thinking at exactly that moment. These are their thoughts and portraits.
posted by freddles on Jan 21, 2005 - 16 comments

1001 Self Portraits reaches 40.
posted by feelinglistless on Nov 24, 2004 - 25 comments

I've been having a great time exploring the maze that is Musarium, wandering about and peeking into into various nooks and crannies to find such exotica as the wonderfully bizarre birdhand book, and absorbing cultural artifacts and musings, including the poetic Visions and Icons (I really love the way the text works with the images on this), the atmospheric Familiar Ghosts (the texts will cue you on clicking through this somewhat dream-like landscape), the time-capsule imagery of Balkan Portraits (1906-1910), the breathtaking portraits of photographer Steve McCurry (famous for his National Geographic portait of the Afghani girl), the subterranean monologue of Grand Central: the View Down Under, and the shocking and heartbreaking Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. There's a lot more, so take your time. You can use this page to access archived material.
posted by taz on Aug 8, 2004 - 13 comments

Bug Portraits by Frank Phillips. ". . .I always keep in mind the goal of capturing the bug from an angle that we humans don't normally see...and I believe that it shows in my work."
posted by Feisty on Mar 9, 2004 - 15 comments

Beyond Compare: Women Photographers On Beauty "An international photography exhibit from Dove that aims to inspire dialogue, move beyond stereotypes and challenge women to question their definition of beauty."
(Flash, mostly safe for work)
posted by ashbury on Mar 1, 2004 - 22 comments

David LaChapelle : New York magazine calls him "the Fellini of photography". Most others just remember the wacky picture of Lil Kim literally covered in Louis Vutton, Britney's coming out party or for that slimy (in a good way!) Christina Aguilera video.
posted by owillis on Jan 12, 2004 - 12 comments

Public Faces In Private Places may not be as wise or nice as private faces in public faces but, in the case of Jane Bown's portraits, I'm sure even W.H. Auden would have gladly opened an exception. It's an outstanding collection and it's fun to identify the faces, as their names only appear when you click to enlarge them. (It's a pity the photographs in the first link are so tiny, but blowing them up only makes it worse. )
posted by MiguelCardoso on Oct 20, 2003 - 2 comments

Manimals - discover the strange and unsettling world of photographer-digital artist Daniel Lee and his darwinian art.
posted by madamjujujive on Oct 25, 2002 - 15 comments

Jorge Colombo has been creating daily portraits of New Yorkers for almost three years straight. While in the past they've tended towards the whimsical, after September 11th, they took on a different tone. [via media nugget]
posted by mathowie on Dec 28, 2001 - 7 comments