Dad, Hampton Ponds III, 2002
© Mitch Epstein

Miguel Garcia-Guzman of Exposure Compensation and Joerg Colberg of Conscientious ask, “what makes a great portrait?”

They received responses from Timothy Briner, Thomas Broening, Chris Buck, David Burnett, Doug Dubois, Joakim Eskildsen, Rob Haggart, Bruce Haley, Bill Hunt, Kalpesh Lathigra, Jason Lazarus, Colin Pantall, Amy Stein, Bill Sullivan, Tribble & Mancenido, Brian Ulrich, Peter van Agtmael and Dylan Vitone.

I took a little too long thinking about how to properly respond to such a question and, as a result, I sent my answer to Joerg and Miguel late in the game. I felt it was hard to get into detail without getting into a lot of detail and spent the last few nights writing long-winded explanations that would just leave me having to write more to explain myself. In the end, my final response was this, which really puts how I feel about a large and captivating subject into very few words: “A successful portrait elicits feeling in an honest account of a person [or place].”

Furthermore, I would add, a great portrait will often make viewer forget that the photography is present.

Mitch Epstein’s portrait of his father will never fail to move me.

Read all of the responses here.

I encourage readers to offer their thoughts on this thread.

Popularity: 50% [?]

Box Props (from “Illuminations”)
© Tim Davis

Over on Words Without Pictures there’s an article by Jason Evans titled Online Photographic Thinking.

This essay addresses the context of the web for photography. It’s a new frontier that, from the standpoint of an independent practitioner, doesn’t seem to have fulfilled its potential, given photography’s phenomenal recent expansion as a contemporary art form as well as its over 150-year-old track record for multiple expansions. I want to ruminate on why that might be – on what conditions might have led to an underwhelming response by serious and independent photographers to the potential of the Internet.

I’m curious what people think of Evans’ assertion that the “potential of the Internet” has had “an underwhelming response by serious and independent photographers.” Has it?

Imagine if the Internet had emerged in the early twentieth century. The majority of those “-ists” would have had a field day – and imagine Warhol and the Internet. I guess it is simply a matter of time before a generation not weaned on paper and chemicals sees the manufactured bubble of “art photography” for what it is, and begins to explore the potential of an inclusive, affordable distribution network and its inherently interesting formal qualities.

And about his conclusion. Is Evans is foreshadowing an inevitable evolution in contemporary photographic production (for the Internet)?

Read the entire essay here. Also see my favorite of Evans’ own online projects, The Daily Nice and The New Scent.

I encourage readers to offer their thoughts on this thread.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Untitled, anonymous photograph from the 1950’s
© Photographer Unknown / National Gallery of Art

While Peter Plagens’ article Is Photography Dead? (written for the December 10th issue of Newsweek) draws a few interesting conclusions about the “digital revolution,” it generally seems to overlook fundamental ideas about art and photography which I thought were actually rather self-evident.

By now, we’ve witnessed all the magical morphing and seen all the clever tricks that have turned so many photographers – formerly bearers of truth – into conjurers of fiction. It’s hard to say “gee whiz” anymore.

Fiction in photography may be a relatively new idea but doesn’t it seem that the notion of photography concerning itself with “truth” or representing “reality” is what perished (long ago)? Since when has fine art photography really been about the “tool” used by the photographer? Isn’t the true power of art that it transcends the mediums limitations by way of the artist?

I encourage readers to offer their thoughts on this thread.

Popularity: 45% [?]