Portraits: The Lens and the Eye

The Royal Society of Portrait Painters and Changing Faces, the
UK’s leading disfigurement charity, invites you to join the debate
The similarities between the role of the photographic portrait and the role of the painted or drawn portrait have created tension with practitioners since the invention of the photograph. Clearly, however, artists have been making use of the lens as part of an image capturing process for centuries. Is it wrong then for a portrait artist to use photography to help paint a sitter and if so, why? For instance, what do portrait photographers look for in their subjects that differs from that of the portrait painter and what can portrait painters achieve that their counterparts cannot? Does the use of photography within portrait painting extend the possibilities or does it impede them? How can the use of photography and video enable the artist to create broader contemporary insights into a subject or comment upon mass media itself? These and many other questions will be discussed by this year’s distinguished panel of practitioners