ABSTRACT

The early industry of photography was dominated by the development of commercial studio portraiture. People wanted portraits or “likenesses.” The conventions of portraiture existed long before photography. The capacity of the new photographic portrait industry to picture masses of people with a relatively inexpensive technology was part of a whole raft of technologies that developed and supported the rapid growth of an emergent industrial society. The industrial production of portraits used in commercial photography was found also to have other applications and uses in the bureaucratic spheres of the state. The expression on a face in portraiture is crucial and can exert a considerable impact on how a portrait signifies meaning. Passport photographs famously try to eliminate all aspects of “subjective” emotion in the portrait. Clothing and the various accessories that go with it, jewellery, hats, gloves, scarves, burka, etc., all contribute to the rhetoric of the portrait.