Black & White: Two Portrait Stories

Portraits in Western Culture For centuries the primary function of portraiture throughout western culture was to immortalize kings, queens, generals, and people of prominence. By and large only the elite could afford to commission a portrait until photography became available in the mid-nineteenth century. Portraiture has occupied a central position in the history of western art and despite formal portraiture's decline (especially in the United States after World War II, as an informal lifestyle expanded across classes and photography became increasingly affordable for the public), by and large portraits continue to be made. As a category of artwork and visual representation, today portraits continue to survive as works of art despite PostModernist critical theory and its denouncement of the object. Overall, as a genre, portrait photography represents a consequential silent yet dynamic visual category of cultural representation: it has the ability to manifest conventions of behavior and appearance appropriate to the members of a society in any given era. Age, gender, race, physical beauty, occupation, and class often can be inferred from the external signifiers housed within a rendered composition. However, a deeper structural meaning arises from the encounter of the viewer with each portrait. Each age possesses deviation of hair, dress, posture, and lighting; a viewer from unlike periods of history likely will have a different interpretation of the "self" portrayed. A study of Hiroshi Sugimoto's lifelike photographic representations of Henry VIII1 and other realistic visual incarnations of historical personalities from a like era sparks our curiosity, yet we as presentday observers are unconnected to the uniqueness of that time (1530s) with its courtly dress codes, social standards, and daily strife. In our time, portraits are all-pervading. Currently there appears to be a profusion of self-portraits by artists, commissioned portraits for private and official business, family groups, media-hype images for political persuasion, celebrity public relations, identity validation, as well as cell phone image exchanges and Internet productions. Because of advanced technology and photography's affordability, portraits today appear to be everywhere-in our wallets, on desktops, the walls of libraries, corporate offices, banks, and schools as well as in museums, galleries, clubs, schools, homes, and magazines. People seem to think they know what a portrait is perhaps because of this availability within the larger global culture. In spite of this, the meaning of portraiture is not easy to access because portraits have come to include a diversity of visual expression, and the motive for their making and existence differ immensely among the larger public and artists. Nowadays the genre of portraiture recognizes all media and refutes hierarchical classification, unlike decades ago when bona fide portraits were expected to yield essentially an exacting appearance. Besides the abduction of portraiture from the seclusion of fine art and private commissions, today its manifestation into the public domain is the result of the inundation of technological advances that make portraits affordable across class. Even if portraits appear to have little or nothing to do with the underlying social conflicts or makeovers of their age, they are nonetheless responsive to changes whether as direct commentaries, thinly disguised allegories, or emphatic attempts at escapism. As a genre, portraiture continuously unfolds into an arena of new significance because of shifting philosophical and social attitudes. People in a society in any given period tend to abide by codes of behavior, and ethical and cultural standards. In turn, a portrait's manifestation can somewhat render essence of the conventions and constraints about a specific period. Contributing to portraiture's diversity today is globalization, the proliferation of digital technology, and the versatile utility of portraits across disciplines and class. …