So far, I have consulted books only on more-or-less-traditional painted portraiture, but there are a lot of them and some are very good indeed. I shall be adding others as we work through the course. At that time, I may well subdivide the list by topic, but for now they are all lumped together, in approximate order of their likely usefulness to interested non-specialists. In most cases. I have included AMAZON links and prices for those that are still in print. rb.
| West, Shearer: Portraiture. Oxford History of Art, 2004. | |
| AMAZON $28 | |
| The illustrations in this book are not the greatest, but its text makes it by far the most stimulating of all those listed here. Rather than writing a mere history (though her general arrangement is chronological), Shearer West addresses the questions of what portraits are, what they are for, and how much they depend on objective truth. I suspect that more than one of her chapter titles—What is a Portrait?" "The Functions of Portraiture," "Power and Status," "Group Portraiture," "The Stages of Life," "Gender and Portraiture," "Self-Portraiture," "Portraiture and Modernism"—will crop up again in thinly-disguised form as topic headings for my classes! | |
| Beyer, Andreas: Portraits: a History. Abrams, 2003. | |
| AMAZON $50 (used) | |
| This may be the most gorgeous book that I own, in any subject. It costs almost $100 new, but it can be found for about half that second-hand; or you could try your library. And it would be eminently worth it. This large coffee-table book not only has superb full-page color illustrations, usually arranged in pairs for provocative comparison, but often follows these up with another double-page spread showing close-up details of the same pictures. The text, translated from German but quite readable, is surprisingly good also, though it does not have West's originality and does not always explain all the details that catch your eye in the magnificent reproductions. But those alone make this a book to have! | |
| Perich, Shannon: The Changing Face of Portrait Photography: from Daguerreotype to Digital. Smithsonian 2011. | |
| AMAZON $35 | |
| Exhibition and museum catalogues seldom make good general introductions to their subject, because they are confined by the availability of their material. But so rich are the holdings of the Smithsonian Photographic History Collection that curator Perich can select ten sample photographers and still make a meaningful history of portrait photography in the English-speaking world from the beginnings to almost the present. His 130 images are the work of such well-known names as Julia Margaret Cameron, Dorothea Lange, and Richard Avedon, but his excellent introductions more than justify the inclusion of the others. I value Perich’s text especially for two things: his clear technical explanations and his detailed discussion of what he calls the "confluence of variables" that go into making a portrait. | |
| Finger, Brad: 50 Portraits You Should Know. Prestel, 2015. | |
| AMAZON $14 | |
| A well-produced picture book of iconic portraits from 1350 to 1988 in good-quality reproductions (though at half the size of the Beyer book above). It is a well-chosen selection that would be useful for reference. The text is brief and I think accurate so far as it goes, but it is not scholarly and the writer makes too much use of phrases like "is generally considered." But there are interesting quotations with each entry, and good capsule bios at the end. Overall, it is good to have such a compact illustrated overview of the history. | |
| Hall, James: The Self-Portrait: a Cultural History. Thames and Hudson, 2014. | |
| AMAZON $25 | |
| Another book like the West whose principal value lies in its text. Not that its illustrations are poor, but there are not enough of them and many are too small. I found it fascinating, but put it last because Hall tackles points that are idiosyncratic rather than general. He is more concerned with the second part of his title than the first, looking at self-portraits (including many kinds of pseudo-self-portrait) mostly as a handle to trace the artist's changing place in society. Later, he becomes more interested in psychological concerns, cherry-picking his examples to make his points; though wonderful in its way, this is not a book to read as a general introduction. Hall's chapter headings are: "Medieval Origins," "A Craze for Mirrors," "The Artist in Society," "The Renaissance Artist as Hero," "Mock-Heroic Self-Portraits," "The Artist's Studio," "At the Crossroads" (a particularly interesting view of the 18th century), "Coming Home: into the Nineteenth Century," and "Beyond the Face: Modern and Contemporary Self-Portraits." | |
| Perich, Shannon Thomas: The Changing Face of Portrait Photography. Smithsonian, 2011. | |
| AMAZON $29 | |
| Shannon Perich's subtitle is From Daguerryotye to Digital, and this is exactly what she does: selecting ten photographers or studios represented in the Smithsonian collection who together span a time period of 180 years. This is not a history, however. With the exception of the short but excellent introduction, she does not include even important photographers who might fill in the gaps between her chosen figures. Not surprisingly, her focus is largely American; the only artist who did not make her career in this country is Julia Margaret Cameron. Other than that, though, her range is wide: Warren, Barr & Wright, Käsebier, Lange, Muray, Avedon, Horenstein, Weingarten, and Lauren Greenfield, who is still very much active today. We get main-street photographers, art photographers, photo-journalists, photographers working for Madison Avenue or Hollywood, and true innovators. Each artist gets a 4–5 page introduction followed by up to a dozen full-page plates. These are excellent, and mostly in color, which does wonders for the subtle tints of some of the earlier images that we mistakenly describe as black-and-white. | |