Train Your Gaze: A Practical and Theoretical Introduction to Portrait Photography

Portraiture is one of the most enduring and compelling of photographic genres. Above all others, it signifies a relationship between the photographer and the subject that is not explicit in other genres. What is common to all portrait photographs is a situational element. In portrait photography, the presence of the photographer’s gaze also becomes an integral part of what the picture is about: the activity of one person looking, manifested in a moment that can feel like the blink of an eye or a small eternity. This book offers for the first time a complete text that combines the theoretical with the practical.

In this ground-breaking new photography course, educator, photographer and artist Roswell Angier offers the student of the visual arts a comprehensive and engaging contextualisation of the subject, including an analysis of precisely what constitutes ‘portrait’ photography, supported and illuminated by iconic portraits, in combination with practical assignments that enables the student to explore, in a way that is both structured and experimental, the realities of taking photographs of human subjects.