Since photography was invented in 1839, it quickly became the most influential medium as it is more connected with the reality compared to painting. It provides us a new way to explore questions of ourselves in relation to the world. As a dominant theme of photography, portrait photography practiced by many artists as the diversity of the subject matter. Like Andy Grundberg (1999, p.200) indicated that, “More than any other kind of images today, portraiture photographs seem able to speck to us directly, without any interference from our accumulated cultural baggage.” More importantly, with the development of over 170 years, it is not only a tool for record the decisive moment of the history, but also reconstructed by a new generation photographers for produce their conceptual art work. Tableau photography is an obvious example that always creates an uncertainty meaning of the photograph. It shares painting’s scale, composition, narrative and traditional subjects; furthermore, it always tried to reveal the inner …show more content…
There is an interesting statement from the French critic and philosopher Roland Barthes (1980, p.14), which is he think photography changed the way we look at ourselves thus he experienced a micro-version of death during the picture taken process. Each time he posing in front the camera, he invariably suffers from a sensation of inauthenticity. As he indicates that there are four opposing and inter-related forces in portrait photography, ‘...The one I think I am, the one I want other to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, an the one he makes use of to exhibit his art’. From this point of view, portrait photography provides photographer an opportunity to modify the subject’s identity. At the same time, the subject received a task, which is to meet the photographer’s idea through their personality, personal experiences and