Portrait Photography

October 22, 2025

Cinematic Photos Look Like Hyperrealistic Paintings With Mysterious Stories To Tell [Interview]

Artist Summer Wagner is a storyteller, and lenses are the vehicle through which she shares her tales. The narrative imagery and video, both of which are cinematic in nature, possess a distinct aesthetic. Her photographs feature a desaturated color palette with a contrast and depth of field that makes each composition feel more like a hyperrealistic painting than something shot with a camera.

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August 13, 2025

Then & Now Portraits of Grateful Dead Fans, 30 Years Apart

We love a good “then and now” photo series, but when you add in the Grateful Dead, it takes on a whole new meaning. Photographer Bill Lemke attended his first Grateful Dead concert in 1980 and was immediately captivated by the band’s superfans, known as Deadheads. However, rather than documenting them through candid photography, he opted for formal portraits. And now, he’s revisited some of the 150 Deadheads he initially photographed between 1985 and 1990.

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July 14, 2025

25 Years Later, Photographer Revisits People With Mixed Race Identity in America [Interview]

Artist and photographer Kip Fulbeck is revisiting his examination of identity as someone of mixed Asian descent. In 2000, he set out to create The Hapa Project, photographing people, like himself, of mixed heritage. Now, 25 years later, he has returned to photograph 130 of the original participants and to add to The Hapa Project in an effort called hapa.me. The word “hapa,” meaning “half” in Hawaiian, is the starting point of this reflection on identity and self.

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May 6, 2025

Intimate Portraits of Tibetan Refugees Offer a Glimpse Into Resilience, Peace, and Compassion [Interview]

By the time he met the young Tibetan woman behind the organization Tibetan Rights Campaign, Phil Borges had grown restless. A few years before then, he’d fully transitioned from a career in orthodontics to one in photography; but, at that point, he was primarily shooting images for romance novels. What were his next steps, he wondered, until the woman told him about the various human rights violations underway in her country.

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My Modern Met

Celebrating creativity and promoting a positive culture by spotlighting the best sides of humanity—from the lighthearted and fun to the thought-provoking and enlightening.