Black and White Portraiture Photography Portfolio by Warren Lee

This is a photo from a series of black and white portraits of artists by los angeles based portrait photographer, Warren Lee. This photo is of a Los Angeles based artist known as Dan Van Clapp. The portrait was made on gallery row in downtown los angeles, and was taken while at an exhibition organized by Phantom Galleries of Los Angeles. This black and white portrait of Dan Van Claap was created using a Hasselblad 503 cw medium format camera and with Kodak Tmax 100 film.  Warren Lee made the photo of Dan Van Claap and also made a separate photo of one of the art works created by Dan Van Claap, and then Warren used photoshop to combine the image of the art piece with the portrait of the artist. The concept behind this digital montage was partly inspired from a quote by the philospher Goethe, translated, ” Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will..” The idea being that if the goal of a portrait is to portray and communicate something that tells a story about the person in the portrait, then if that person in the protrait is an artist, the best way to capture a portrait of an artist is to show the artist with his or her art work. This concept for portraiture of artists is certainly not a new one, however in the series of artist portraits by Warren Lee the idea has evolved from simply showing an artist beside his work, to creating complex digital montages of each artist blended within images of art work created by that artist. More examples of these types of artist portraits by Los Angeles based photographer Warren Lee can be found on his online portfolio:  Artist Portraits by Warren Lee, and much more also on Flickr.