Mpls Photo Center celebrates the portrait
An exhibition on display all this month at the Mpls Photo Center invites viewers to ponder what exactly makes a compelling portrait. Minneapolis Institute of Arts curator David Little was asked to jury the show. Little says while the portrait is as old as art itself, photography excels at the task.
No other medium offers such a direct sense of human form and psyche. And no other medium gives us the uncanny sense of being there in time and space with the subject depicted. Our vast collective archives of pictures of friends, family, and acquaintances are proof of this resilient power of the photographic image.
Little whittled down more than 1200 submissions from 232 photographers using a technique that was at once both methodical and instinctive. His first choice amongst them all is the image you see above – “Hugo” by Joseph Holmes. Taking second prize was the work of a Minnesota photographer (and MSUM Art Professor) Don Clark’s “Young Kate in Sheep Fank.”
Read the complete story at: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/state-of-the-arts/archive/2010/01/mpls-photo-center-celebrates-the-portrait.shtml