Does he look evil? Can a photograph/simple portrait tell something about ones personality?
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No, just a portrait can not tell anything about ones personality! Maybe he is a good man in general but maybe he did something bad once that he must be punished from
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Maybe the viewers imagination will start to think that a single portrait tells something. Or a portrait tells me something if I know the person. Maybe a portrait is an interesting or important add-on when talking about a person or a background-story is given. But a single portrait without environment, without further information is a bit kind of “useless” in general – to me. The aesthetical aspect could be interesting though. I remember some portraits of Thomas Liehr (I think some people here know him), which I like a lot. You can see and feel there was a natural, personal connection between the photographer and the person. But they got much more valuable yet to me when I heard Thomas talking about the backgrounds of his pictures (better: of the persons). I know that there is the “rule”, that a picture has to speak for itself. Very difficult to me when looking at portraits.
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That is what I consider to be a portrait – the image that tells a story. It is of utter challange to make a portrait where viewer can read the lines drawn in it. It is also true that one has to be a very wise man to notice the details that speak about person.
For example, some year ago we had Halsman’s exib. in Riga, and at some point, after having seen several images, I decided to guess who is the person just upon looking at the picture. I had relative success, BUT, when I reached the picture of a young girl with a happy face, I realised that it doesn’t tell a thing. Title was self explaining – she was a model – no portrait by definition.
To make a portrait one has to be a person of high confidence to the one you are taking picture of – so that, in other words, person is ready to slide into the intimate conversation and show his face that may be is not a common thing for him self. Do we know oneself?
So I would say that, at first, it has to be a Portrait, and the rest is upon the intelligence of the viewer.
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