travelight
Lucia, Milan 2016
A good portrait is just an accurate representation of the subject’s face. A great portrait is when the representation suggests what’s possible in the subject’s face. A great portrait hints at something transformative.
I don’t know Lucia. I know nothing at all about her, aside from the obvious (and rather unimportant) fact that she’s very pretty. But contained within this very somber, serious, sober portrait is something wonderful — that transformative thing I mentioned earlier.
A smile.
Or, rather, the potential of a smile. You can look at this portrait and with no effort at all, you can see what that smile would be like. A great portrait allows the viewer to see what isn’t there, but could be.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
