The portrait

The portrait, apparently a simple matter to manage, is perhaps the mots difficult of photographic genres. Although portraiture, like all areas of photography, is today a mass-product, over 170 years of photographic history the number of outstanding portraits has remained limited. Good portraits have always been a question of interaction between photographer and model. The charisma of the model reacts to the charisma of the photographer, and in the most favorable cases, the effect have been reciprocal.


Of the hundred of thousands of exposures made in the whole long life of a photographer, only a few dozen photographic masterpieces often survive.


Peter Stepan, 50 Photographers you should know