Early Portraits vs. Modern Day Portraits

                             (Top:Andrew Jackson photographed by Mathew Brady in 1845  Bottom: George Clooney, Martin Schoeller, Close Up: Portraits (1998-2005)

           The main objective in any portrait past or present is to capture that moment in someone’s life. In most cases a portrait was taken in a moment of succession, a point of pride in one person’s life, a family’s time spent together as a whole. Being able to capture that beautiful moment in time, and to cherish that and conceal it so it can be represented as almost a time capsule is truly beautiful. And though the idea of a portrait continues to develop, it can also be destroyed in the modern day.

Photographers such as Martin Schoeller who have created an art in creating portraits, can still acknowledge the beauty that the portrait once conveyed. With his work Close Up: Portraits (1998-2005), Martin Schoeller took stripped down, hyper-close portraits of both world renown celebrities and everyday people. These photographs take an in-depth look at the human face, nothing is hidden, the wrinkles, the laugh line, the scars are all put on display accentuating the face and displaying it in a completely new fashion. Though Martin Schoeller’s work does not end there his photographs grace the pages of some of North America’s most popular magazines (The New Yorker, Outside Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, GQ, Esquire, and Vogue). Both his stripped down portraits and those of which include backgrounds and props are truly remarkable, and display a true understanding of the modern day portrait.

Where the modern day portrait tends to lose its lustre is when social networks come into play. As much denial as there is, the “display pictures” are also portraits. They’re moments caught and digitally saved into the modern world, displayed for everyone. This is for the most part where portraits have steered in a new direction in comparison to the early day portrait. What was once a display of success and pride now becomes a bad recollection of the night before. And though for some, the core meaning of the portrait holds true, in capturing a moment in your life that can now be looked back at for years to come, it seems in the modern day we’re all photographers attempting to capture our best sides.