portraiture

A portraiture is an artists representation of a person or an object. Most commonly they were of wealthy or high class people, and were taken as a repersentation of the power that person held. They were usually of people such as, kings, queens, the pope or other religious people and were posed to show power to the public. This was the persons repersentaion of them selfs. 

Also there were portraits where it was the artists veiw of the person.This usually showed the person in a bad way and added a two sided argument on the peoples veiw.

Diane Arbus (March 14, 1923 - July 26, 1971) was an american photographer & writer. She was known to take photos of steriotypicals 'abnormal people' who seem surreal. These were people such as dwarfs, giants, tranvestites, nudists and circus performers. A Friend sais that Arbus said she was " afraid... that she would be knows simply as the photographer of freaks.

However apart from this she was asked to photograph a rich family over the christmas period. This family was the Matthaei family. She took many photos of the family and spent time with the children of the family. One of the photos taken of the young girl was very well interpreted, as when she grew up she agreed that she had caputed the mood and feelings she was experianceing at that age; misery.

Unfortuantly Diane Arbus experienced depression during her life similar to those experienced by her mother. On July 26, 1971, Arbus took her own life by ingesting barbiturates and slashing her wrists with a razor. Marvin Israel found her body in the bathtub two days later; she was 48 years old.