The Subject with a Story.

Louis Marie Autissier

Portraits of people have been seen for centuries; in museums of past loyalties or in your living room of a loved one. When portraits began, they served as a memory from the past generations, portraits were created only for the wealthy; the ones who could afford the high costs that followed in the newly discovered technology. Before photography began, miniature portraits were taken. This portrait was the bust view of a person, created with watercolours on stretched vellum, copper or ivory. This typically left the 'photographer' as anyone who was able to paint. This had changed when physionotrace was created (a portrait that was the profile form of a silhouette) and portraits were taken by craftsmen who would handle the cut-out pictures. Not quite through technology, but rather a new idea, Chretien, son of a past engraver, created a device that would quicken the time a portrait was done; the physionotrace, which reproduced images mechanically with rods over a blank piece of paper. 

Vincent Van Gogh

President Barack Obama

There were not very many types of portrait options in the past with the lack of technology. The major difference between portraits now and before would be the final look. Due to the increase of technology, it has greatly impacted what we can visualize as a portrait. In the past it was typically painted out trying to get all the little details as well as trying to achieve realism with the piece. With technology, portraits can be at different angles (front, side etc), different colours (black+white, tinted etc.) or taken with different cameras (fisheye, birds-eye). Portraits are still generally of the top half of the person even with all the changes. The fun thing is that now we have achieved realism within our pictures, cameras are developed with options to create abstract pictures, for example the Mac application of Photobooth which can create distorted pictures. Having said that, the photographer has greatly changed over time. As it is still considered a profession today, portraits can still be achieved as long as a person knows how to work a camera. Or even know how to click a button on a computer to take the picture. The major difference would be the different options one can choose from now opposed to before. Even with technology, they all contain the same idea; the subject with a story

Sources: 
http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/new_official_portrait_released/


http://artroots.com/art/art18_index.html

http://www.nationalmuseum.se/sv/Om-Nationalmuseum/For-press-och-media1/Pressbilder1/Miniatyrer/Louis-Marie-Autissier-iSjalvportratti/

Weynants, Thomas "Precursors of Photography: The Physionotrace Portraits". Early Visual Media. Januaray 20, 2011 <http://users.telenet.be/thomasweynants/precursors.html>

Readings : Excerpt from A History of Photography by Lemagny and Rouille