A Very Brief History of Portrait Photography
Photography is an art that conveys all the feelings and unsaid words in the photography scene and the subject to the audience with no language. This art, which today has countless fans all over the world, is divided into different branches, one of the most popular of which is portrait photography or face photography. Portrait photography is the photography of people’s faces that is recorded in different categories and various subjects. Recording people’s faces has been popular since long ago, even before the advent of cameras and photography, which was called portrait painting. With the passage of time and the advent of the first cameras and photography technology, portrait painting gave way to portrait photography. Due to the time-consuming nature of painting and its great effort, portrait photography was able to find a very good place among the people of the world and gradually became the most popular branch of photography.
Portrait photography was first introduced to the French Academy of Sciences in 1839 by Louis Daguerre. After that, another person named Robert Cornelius took the first portrait photograph. After this incident, the fans of this type of photography gradually increased and the photographers of that time decided to take portraits of famous people. The development of this style of photography was such that in 1870, this type of photography was also used in the field of crime and crimes to record the faces of criminals. Over time and with the development of portrait photography, other countries also became familiar with this style of photography and were added to the group of users of this art. One of the countries that decided to use this type of photography style was Iran.
The beginning of the new century continued with the use of portraiture for documentary purposes. In 1906 Louis Hein was hired to photograph the conditions faced by child laborers in various factories across the United States. His photographs were used to help pass child labor reforms. For example, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which prohibited child labor, and the request of the US State Department in 1914 for all passports to be photographed. The stock market crash of 1929 led to the next round of documentary portraits. In 1935, photographers were hired to document what was happening in American farmland. The Resettlement Department, which later became the Farm Security Department, wanted to find out through photographs how farmers spend their days. The new conditions offered many programs to artists and photographers, including work progress management or project management. People from all over America were recruited for the Documented Lives Period (WPA). One of the famous WPA photographers was Doretha Long, who documented the plight of farmers in America.
Portrait photography, which is considered the first style of photography, has progressed a lot from the past to the present day and has certain principles and techniques. Despite the passage of time, there are still many people around the world who are fans of this style of photography and record their photos as portraits.