Clarity on a blog. No one ever wrote here that people are still buying "traditional/formal" portraits from JCPenney's. Some markets die off. Styles change. And that's normal. Uncomfortable for some. But normal.

I wrote a piece several days ago in response to a blog post by Michael Johnston in which he said that photographic portraiture is dying. That people don't want to have portraits made. That people he asked to sit for his personal portrait work seemed perplexed and a bit paranoid about even being asked to sit for a portrait. And were resistant. 

My small essay was meant to be a disagreement with his premise. Evidence shows that in many fields of photography (editorial, commercial, art) portraits are a healthy product category for photographers but not in the way that 20th century markets were. Families are not necessarily buying formal portraits. They are not investing in images taken in front of dappled canvas backgrounds, lit with a main light, a fill light, a background light and a hair light. Parents aren't dragging their children into retail portrait studios to get images made of Jack and Jill, in matching outfits, grinning into the camera, surrounded by hackneyed props. And one of the reasons they are not is that theirfamily's actual income has dropped, year over year. Other priorities prevail. We didn't used to have to pay for television broadcasts, most family houses were smaller and less expensive, education was relatively cheaper, etc. But one of the biggest changes is that the web showed a much wider range and more vibrant approach to photography than people had been previously exposed.

Styles have also changed and retail photographers did not have the resources to change along with the times.. Or the ability to even understand the differences.

In fact, as good cameras, even the ones in phones, have become more accessible the perceived need for an outside service to take portraits of other family members has receded and been replaced by a constant stream of images generated by the family members themselves. The retail customer has been removed from the profitable practice of portraiture. But those were never our clients here. Nor were they the active participants in making "Art" portraits.

I would posit that the current market for portraiture has actually ballooned but it's not supported by the middle class American (the markets I know about) family anymore. Instead its market now is the advertising industry, across all media, the corporations, the associations, any business with a website, and all the rest of the entities whose wallets have kept up with inflation and economic shifts. Entities that need to continue having forward momentum in the vast marketplaces. Entities that realize the value of changing styles and looks. Entities that have budgets.

Writing to tell me that the last mom and pop portrait studio in your small to mid-sized town has shut down, along with the bricks and mortar camera stores, and the book stores, and the electronics shops isn't relevant to my premise which is: Businesses (the ones with budgets) of all kinds have continued to need and want portraits. Hard stop. College towns and towns with higher average incomes and higher average education levels are a better pond to fish for art portrait subjects as well.

I am not a "gifted outlier" or the last hired gun in Dodge to eke out an existence taking portraits. Portraits are a baseline product for most working, freelance photographers. It's the styles and the target audiences that have changed. And there has always been a hard demarcation between commercial practitioners and family portrait studios!

The second thing I discussed was the fact that a photographer's surroundings (the relative wealth and education of their geographic location) and the photographer's personal presentation have more to do with getting acceptance for collaborations from regular people to make art portraits. Portraits that are taken for personal websites, Instagram, Flickr, all manner of social media, books, shows and portfolios. 

Portraits taken because the photographer see something interesting about a subject and not because money is changing hands.

I would not argue at all whether or not collaborations and mutually beneficial portrait relationships still exist. They most obviously do. You need only have access to the web to divine that. My argument is that there are roadblocks to access based, again, on one's surrounding area demographics, the photographer's personal presentation (his or her appearance, attitude, personality, etc.) and the professed intention of use for the resulting artwork. The portrait subject requires some sort of defensible rationale from the artist in order to feel comfortable and engaged. To feel valued in the process. And the final results.

That's the gist of my previous essay. Not whether or not the last portrait studio in Waco, Texas has closed because of some external influence. Not that beautiful woman won't pose for anyone anymore. Not that the web has ruined all interpersonal, actual relationships between artists and their muses. 

Opportunities to do great portraits abound. But everything changed over time. Trying to overlay a style that's dated to a new and well educated demographic is a hard sell. But not because of the potential audiences or the potential subjects. It's the same reason we don't lease old telephones from Bell anymore and instead use continually evolving smartphones. And in fact, we don't really talk on the phones anymore, we text. etc. etc. etc.

 Only one of the images above was done on a job. The rest were projects my friends and I did together.