Solitary in Toronto
April 24, 2011 UncategorizedI rarely make traditional portraits, those images that consist of the head and shoulders of an individual looking straight at the camera, with nothing in the background but a plain white wall. I find such photos boring. And I find books of such photos, head-and-shoulders portrait after head-and-shoulders portrait, uninteresting.
Nevertheless, I took this portrait of a friend in a Toronto cafe, and indeed, my subject is looking straight at the camera in a photograph depicting her head and shoulders, more or less. However, the photo is made more interesting, in my view, by the design on the cafe wall – an outline of a girl’s profile – and the fragment of a girl on the left, whose shirt echoes the pattern on the shirt of my subject.
The combination of my subject’s expression and these other elements is what makes this a portrait worthy of sharing with you.
I have added this photograph, Solitary in Toronto, to the Portait Gallery at www.wmgphoto.com.