What Makes a Great Portrait?

Rineke Dijkstra

I came across this article, which is a compilation of responses to the question 'what makes a great portrait?' There's some interesting mentions of existing portraits, and there's a lot of alluding to an unidentifiable, human quality in successful pictures which I am very interested in exploring further myself.

here's the link to the article: http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/2008/02/what_makes_a_great_portrait.html

and here's some links to photographers mentioned in it:

Kelly Krabill http://www.flickr.com/photos/27241164@N06/

Chris Buck: www.chrisbuck.com

Doug Dubois: www.dougdubois.com (I especially like his family photos, and the series about the parade)

Richard Avedon: www.richardavedon.com

Arnold Newman: http://www.pdngallery.com/legends/newman/

Rineke Dijkstra: http://www.rinekedijkstra.net/

Gregory Crewdson: http://www.luhringaugustine.com/index.php?mode=artists&object_id=66#


Gregory Crewdson