Portrait Week!

Girl sitting on her bed with her shirt off, 1968 by Diane Arbus

Arbus spent much of her brief working career trying to figure out who we remarkable creatures are. She said she was looking for the flaw, by which she meant the distinguishing characteristic, the gap between person and persona, and the vital difference. - Vicki Goldberg, writing about Diane Arbus

Alec has declared it Portrait Week, and quite rightly so, what with all the conversation buzzing around.

Just now I was IM’ing with jb photographer Christine Collins about the John Singer Sargent quote Alec cited: “A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth.” She said it was one of her favorite quotes about portraits, and then threw the Arbus one above out to me and emailed me the portrait to accompany it. Nice synergy with my B+W post from earlier today, eh?