P O R T R A I T S

Way back when, portraits were painted. It was those with money that had the pleasure to have their portrait painted. Having a portrait of yourself signified that you were upper class. According to Gisele Freud it was 'the bourgeoisie had already manifested its profound need for self-glorification, a need which provoked the development of new forms and techniques of portraiture.' The rising classes had also started to use the artistic conventions that the nobility has used, although changing it to meet their own demands. This is where painted portraits began to transform into photographed portraits.

                               Painted Portrait                                                 Photographed Portrait

Money was very important, being that a portrait would cost a lot of money, the solution was to find a faster and cheaper way of getting them. There were two ways that photography was practiced in the 1850's. One was was mainly used in a studio using the wet collodion, the other being mainly used in the great outdoors to capture scenery using a calotype. It was the use of the calotype that was used often because "it was lighter, robust and cheap" ... "favoured by amateurs such as Victor Regnault, Edouard Loydreau, Baron Louis- Adolphe Humbert de Molard, Paul Jeuffrain, Louis-Remy Robert, and others, as it also was by professionals such as Charles Negre and William John Newton who, being painters as well as photographers, entertained the hope of combining commercial activity with photography which aimed to be artistic."

   Picture taken in Mont Tremblant, Quebec                           Picture taken in front of Notre Dame in Paris, France ^

                                                        Picture taken in the Atrium of George Brown College

Pictures can now be taken and printed in a matter of minutes! Today ANYONE can be the photographer, ANYONE can be the subject. It does not matter the rank of your social net worth anymore, it only matters now if you can get a hold of a camera.


B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Freud, Gisele. Photograpic Portrait. Print.

Lemagny, Jean-Claude, and Andre%u0301 Rouille%u0301. A History of Photography: Social and Cultural Perspectives. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire: Cambridge UP, 1987. Print.

"Artwork «." Web. 17 Feb. 2011. <http://heatherelizabeth.wordpress.com/tag/artwork/>.

"Queen Victoria." The Victorian Web: An Overview. Web. 17 Jan. 2011. <http://www.victorianweb.org/vn/victor6.html>.