Seeing the portrait with different eyes

"The painter constructs, the photographer discloses," wrote Susan Sontag in her tome, "On Photography." While the portrait has been one of the most influential genres in art for millennia, the media employed has changed tremendously. The Bonn exhibition "With Different Eyes. The Portrait in Contemporary Photography." looks at how these changes have created the portrait as we understand it today.

A hospice nurse was snapped here in 2015 by Joerg Lipskoch as part of his series, People of the 21st century. An homage to August Sanders, the series documents its subjects in their everyday life under headings such as "school and education" or "leisure and relaxation."

Hiroh Kikai's Asakusa series of portraits were all snapped in the Tokyo district of the same name, near the oldest Buddhist temple in the city. One of the temple walls served frequently as a backdrop in order to maintain the neutral effect Kikai was going for here. This 1987 work is titled "A clerk who was letting her hair grow long."

Norwegian photographer Mette Tronvoll spent months in the Arctic, at a former mining town that is now home to a community of climate change researchers. Their portraits appear in her Svalbard series. The harsh, barren landscape provides an interesting backdrop to enhance the feeling of isolation seen on the subjects' faces. This photo is from 2014.

What appears to be a simple portrait of a man standing on a country road, when unpacked tells the story of Dalliendorf, the artist's childhood hometown in Germany. Albrecht Tübke's 1996 series, which captures people at work, includes this proud image of a stonecutter who specializes in Carrara marble, the privileged medium of choice from sculptors like Michaelangelo and Canova.

The various media included in the exhibition says as much about contemporary photography as do the images themselves. Jan Paul Elvers' 2012 silver gelatine print of a couple with their dog acts as a contrast to the sharper images as well as film installations it is hung alongside, showing both the limits and the possibilities in new photography tools.

Say cheese! Many people have grown up having their picture taken. From baby announcements to class pictures at school, the smiling portrait in front of a neutral backdrop may appear inauthentic. And yet these images reflect something of the society in which we live. Pictured is Annette Kelm's "American Portrait" from 2007.

Group portraits maintain their own unique dynamics. Less spontaneous than the others in the exhibition, this image by Clegg & Guttmann from 2000, entitled "Group Portrait of Bundesministers," exemplifies the difficulties faced in capturing out-sized personalities on a small canvas, in this case just 113x169 centimeters big.

Embedded with British troops in Afghanistan's volatile Helmand Province, Mark Neville was confronted daily with life-threatening situations in a warzone. His books capture both the experience on the ground and its aftermath, with pictures of the soldiers who have returned home traumatized, like "Firing Range" from 2011.

A portrait captures a particular moment in time; what does it say about the culture, the society in which it was taken? That's heavily influenced by the photographer's choices. As Susan Sontag said in "On Photography," "It is always the image that someone chose; to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude." This 1991 photo by Wolfgang Tillmans is called "Domestic Scene, Remscheid."

One of the world's largest garbage dumps sets the scene for this portrait of a man out in search of the valuable components left behind in the computers, refrigerators and other electronics deposited here in Accra, Ghana. This portrait, "Permanent Error" (2009-10), is the work of South African Pieter Hugo, whose oeuvre contains political and social-critical elements.

Taking an encyclopedic approach to capturing people in their various costumes and uniforms, French artist Charles Fréger used gauze as a backdrop when snapping this Breton girl in her traditional 19th century garb to lend it the air of an oil painting. The work is from his 2011-2014 series, "Bretonnes."

"The portrait was so important in the Sworn Virgins series. I was fascinated by how much the external matched the internal," artist Pepa Hristova has said. In a cultural phenomenon unique to Albania, young women swear to not marry, prioritizing the care for her family after a patriarch's death, an authentic promise Hristova said, that changes the women completely. "Qamile 1" is from 2008-10.