I've always admired portrait photography.

I'm in awe of the likes of Arnold Newman, Josef Karsh, Irving Penn, and Aussies like David Moore, Max Dupain and Helmut Newton. For all that, I've tended to treat portraiture as something of a spectator sport - which is a major failure on my part.

That said, from my armchair (or basement, for my North American readers) I'm going to "have a go" at some recent examples of portraiture.

I should begin by saying that I'm not aware of any all-encompassing definition of photographic portraiture. Wikipedia defines it as:

Portrait photography or portraiture is photography of a person or group of people that displays the expression, personality, and mood of the subject. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of the photograph is usually the person's face, although the entire body and the background or context may be included.

That gives a lot of options and covers a lot of ground. There have been and continue to be glorious formal portraits such as these:

 Norman Lindsay by Max Dupain

And Karsh, like Shakespeare or Beethoven is arguably part of our culture ...

Then there's the less formal school. I love environmental portraits.Check out Irving Penn's Igor Stravinsky:

So, given this latitude ... I was disappointed when I visited the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra to see the 2013 National Photographic Portrait Prize.

I'm not so egocentric that I expect to like everything shown. I expect a full range of reactions from gobsmacked to angry - but not to be disappointed.  There's some damn fine work in this year's exhibition, but there's a lot of rubbish too (in my humble opinion!).

What do I mean by rubbish?  Images that could only be described as "snaps". Yes, I know there's a fine line between photojournalistic or even environmental portraiture - but quite a few were well over the line.

Also, I would expect any portrait to be sharp. Many were not. One in particular was simply out of focus. No doubt the cognoscenti would patiently explain to me that this "artistic", but I consider it shows a lack of craft. Similarly, eyes should be in focus, but noses can be a tad blurry. Several images were the other way around.

There also appeared to be a hefty dollop of political correctness in the selections. I can't believe the selections (from over 1,200 entries, I believe) really had that many "land rights for gay whales" images.

Many of the PC selections also had another characteristic that I find unforgivable: they only made any sense with a written explanation. Photography and portraiture are visual art forms. The image should speak for itself. If an image only has meaning with a hefty panel of explanatory text next to it, then the artist has failed.

To be fair to the Portrait Gallery, they're not alone in all this. I followed a link from a tweet earlier today which prompted me to write this little rant - because the piece on portraiture seemed to be advocating the very kind of "portraiture" I dislike so much!

I'll get off my soap box now.

Have a good Easter.

The value of photographs - and why they're worth preserving

I want to write about the value of photographs - and why they're worth preserving. 

(Those of you who know me and have heard this already may like to browse Wikipedia now or make a cup of tea.)

The poor souls who attend my Digital Photography classes at Erindale are told with some apparent authority by yours truly that a photograph has value if it was one or more of the following characteristics:

• it's fine art. Not many of us produce a lot of this, unfortunately;
• it's of value to you. The grandparent's shot of a grandchild (or vise versa) is a classic example; or
• it's a record of something of value that has been lost.

It's this third point that was reinforced for me recently.

It's Canberra's 100th birthday on 12 March 2013 and for those of you not familiar with the history of our wide brown land, it had a troubled beginning. While it was proclaimed in 1913, due to two world wars, the Great Depression and indifference from much of Australia, it wasn't really developed until the 1960s.

I recently saw some photographs made from the 1910s through to the 1970s showing Canberra "before". These images were accompanied by very good attempts to make the same image from the same vantage point - using landmarks to try to orientated the photographer. The whole show was quite fascinating.

Now these images were workman-like shots, but they were made for a purpose - and that purpose wasn't great art. They were intended as a record only. And it's well that they were made because they are a record of places and indeed, people who are gone forever. Nothing will bring that place back. Even if the unthinkable (and highly improbable) were to take place and mankind were to be wiped out by some catastrophe, the place where Canberra now sits will never look as it did in 1913 - or in 1960.

So my point is that even the most mundane snaps have value as they will inevitably record - and in a sense, preserve - someone or something that is no-longer with us.

And this brings me to another of my hobby horses: an image is only useful if it's preserved and can be found.

These images were preserved because they had been made by a government agency and carefully stored and catalogued. If they had been treated as are so many images made today, I'm sure they would be lost - and so would their value.

When attending big public events, I wonder at the number of people using their phones as cameras. Don't get me wrong - most of the smart phones these days have very capable photographic capability - but what happens then? Are these images stored, or are they uploaded (and down sampled) on Facebook, perhaps? Maybe they're sent by email or SMS - but are they kept? We are told that more photography is taking place now than ever before, but where will the images of the people and places that are gone forever be found in 10, 20 or 100 years?

So my thought for the day is: whatever means you use to capture those "snaps" of family, friends and places: save and protect them for the future!

Thanks for reading this through to the end.  I'll have a little lie down now ...

Shane