"Blow Job" is a series of portraits of people with gale-force winds blown directly into their faces. (SFW) [more inside]
posted by flyingsquirrel on May 16, 2012 - 62 comments

An Artist Goes Undercover at a JC Penney Portrait Studio.
posted by chunking express on Apr 25, 2012 - 39 comments

"The Soldier Portraits Project...consists of portrait photographs of soldiers of the United States Army, primarily of the 3rd Infantry Division...[t]he photographs are made using the 150 year old collodion wet plate process - the same process that was used to document much of the period (and many of the soldiers) of the Civil War." [more inside]
posted by cjelli on Jan 25, 2012 - 9 comments

Glamour photography of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, etc. [NSFdialup]
posted by Trurl on Aug 26, 2011 - 55 comments

The original time-lapse self portrait? And some modern artists: Enchanting self portraits from Iceland's Rebekka Gaudleifs. Nude self portrait (NSFW) from Israeli artist Roni River. Disturbing stories from Canada's projecteye (NSFW) and magical self-portrait from New Hampshire-based Sarah Ann Loreth.
posted by SylviaAspevig on Mar 21, 2011 - 8 comments

Seydou Keïta, self taught Malian portrait photographer, shot some of the most renowned portraiture of 1940 - 1960's Bamakan society. [more inside]
posted by iamck on Nov 4, 2010 - 13 comments

In addition to being a five term US senator, Barry Goldwater was an accomplished photographer, particularly of people and landscapes of the American West. [more inside]
posted by Nelson on Aug 24, 2010 - 27 comments

The Aura Camera was developed in the 1970s by Polaroid as a way to see auras around people as a psychic might. Though very rare, Carlo Van De Roer managed to get his hands on an AuraCam 6000 to capture a stunningly unique series of portraits [some mildly NSFW].
posted by tuck_nroll on May 14, 2010 - 49 comments

Portraits – Somewhat creepy but arresting, nevertheless.
posted by tellurian on Mar 8, 2010 - 26 comments

"I found him, this little dog in a dumpster down in the projects in the South Side while I was pickin’ up cans. The reason I picked it up is because whenever I see a little child I give it to him." [more inside]
posted by AzraelBrown on Jan 11, 2010 - 10 comments

The Human Survey is a photo project by Nathan Jones. [more inside]
posted by blaneyphoto on Dec 13, 2009 - 13 comments

Obama's People [full-screen slideshow]: one photographer; one background; fifty-two members of the incoming US administration. Oh, and one "significant item" per person. The kind of thing -- not just a political piece, but a photographic project -- that reminds you what the institutional clout of the New York Times can make possible.
posted by holgate on Jan 14, 2009 - 93 comments

"When my friend Richard Renaldi showed me the first images from the new series Touching Strangers I was just amazed. Asking two complete strangers to not only pose with each other, but to also touch each other while doing that... And this in a culture whose discomfort with touching someone you don't know, or touching something that someone else might have touched still baffles me, even after having spent almost ten years in it!" - A Conversation with Richard Renaldi about 'Touching Strangers' [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Nov 10, 2008 - 22 comments

Elizabeth Heyert struggles to remove the photographer from portraiture, moving contra Richard Avedon. Three series: Sleepers (interview), Travelers (interview), Narcissists [NSFWish] (essay).
posted by klangklangston on Sep 29, 2008 - 25 comments

In the 17th century Dutch painters began to create informal paintings that focused on the features and/or expressions of anonymous people. These were called tronies. Although a tronie showed a person’s face, it wasn’t considered a portrait. [...] In 1995 Dutch photographer Hendrik Kerstens began a series of tronies featuring his daughter Paula. some images NSFW
posted by xod on May 22, 2008 - 35 comments

What makes a great portrait?
posted by klangklangston on Feb 7, 2008 - 20 comments

Like to faire une photo? You're not alone. The inimitable (but perhaps for not much longer) National Geographic magazine has advice for taking portraits, travel photography, landscapes, excitingly vague 'adventure' photos and even plan old digital photography. After you've created magic how about selling it or getting published? Sharing is so 2007.
posted by oxford blue on Jan 20, 2008 - 13 comments

Is this a portrait of young Abraham Lincoln?
posted by edverb on Feb 12, 2007 - 67 comments

Creative Americans: The Carl Van Vechten Photographs Collection at the Library of Congress consists of 1,395 photographs taken by American photographer Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) between 1932 and 1964. The bulk of the collection consists of portrait photographs of celebrities, including many figures from the Harlem Renaissance. Portraits include those of Tallulah Bankhead, Salvador Dali, Truman Capote, Dizzy Gillespie, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eartha Kitt, and Joe Louis. They are all available in medium or high resolution JPEG’s or uncompressed archival TIFF versions.
posted by ND¢ on Feb 17, 2006 - 10 comments

The Adaption to my Generation - daily portraits of Jonathan Keller...from 1998 to the present (as he states, "The project will continue until the day I die. Only then will it be complete, and worth its true value."). Also of note...his links page, which includes links to other "passage of time" (like the Portrait of Louise Anna Kubelka from birth to adulthood and Nicholas Nixon's "25 Years of the Brown Sisters") and "obsessive" (like Eat22 and 365 Plrds) photo projects...via Information Aesthetics.
posted by tpl1212 on Jan 26, 2006 - 14 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

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