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.