I’m a dedicated documentary photographer, most of the time. For my money, the most powerful pictures are the ones which bear witness to unvarnished, unscripted life. I’m talking about photojournalism. Photography’s most immediate power over other arts such as painting or sculpture is its inherent promise of at least some reality. Photoshop, Instagram filters and artificial intelligence aside, photographs are representations of what actually happened — what something really looked like, at one point in time.
But sometimes, photography is something else, something more constructed. That usually means a portrait, in the case of human likenesses, with the subject looking at the camera, letting viewers know the subject knows they are being looked at.
A sub genre of this kind of thing is the publicity photo, a picture with a purpose. Sometimes the purpose is just to make someone look good or downright cool. Other times, the picture is supposed to urge a viewer to do something, like buy a ticket to a show.
I’ve made zillions of photographic portraits. I’ve also done a fair amount of arts promotion, be it bands, plays or physical performers. Here are a few shots I’m proud of making.
