We're drawn to portraits because they are human beings, and we're human beings.

I can relate to it somehow.

We're people, so we like looking at people.

We're very social.

And I think that a face can say so much.

We've been portraying ourselves to imitate, represent, flatter, to situate with some kind of social status.

At its core, it's our desire to record, to document our existence.

[music playing] We've been depicting people since cave drawings, but that was more of a ceremony or celebration.

In terms of portraiture, the ancient Egyptians were the first to really depict the gods and pharaohs as the gods, and celebrate that and record that.

Same thing with the Greeks and the Romans, and up into even medieval times, where it was more religious figures.

The whole first part of civilization, in terms of what we were portraying, was the aspiration for perfection and beauty, and our interpretation of it, largely because of the philosophers of the time.

It certainly was also where you stood in society.

If you could afford to get a portrait done in the first place, then you're already making a statement that I'm important.

When photography came around, it was no longer a portrayal of a human.

It was the reality.

It was a human.

And so there was no cheating.

There was no interpretation.

It was still portraiture, but it was that person.

And then around the Civil War, it was photojournalism.

And towards the end of the 1800s, people started using portraiture as a means of expression rather than just recording events.

And now we're back to the celebrities, which are our modern versions of gods.

They're the ones who a lot of people worship.

And so my portraiture tries to tell a little bit of a story.

What I look for is something you can relate to.

We've almost come full circle.

But philosophically, it's changed in that it went from deifying only the richest and most powerful humans to everyday folk.

[music playing] I love stories.

That's what draws me to photography.

I took a photo at dawn and I thought, wow, this reminds me a lot of how I feel when I look at photos of my father.

Very disconnected feeling.

My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2007.

I started the Sleepwalker project in 2009, and started taking portraits of him.

And then also was taking self-portraits to participate in it, and have him not feel like he's alone.

I'm really trying to recreate someone who's feeling increasingly disconnected with things around them, from people around them.

I try to forget where I am and focus on him and what he's going through.

And I feel like when I'm actually connected to that, those are the best photos.

I really wanted to track the disease and have it tell a story about what's happening to him.

Because time is everything with Alzheimer's.

Like at what point, if there is a point, is he no longer the same person.

Soon, or eventually, he won't know who he is, and he won't know who I am and who anyone around him is.

So that's why I think, also, that the Sleepwalker works as a story.

Portrait photography is incredibly relatable to us.

I think that a face can say so much, and portraits are very accessible to us.

I think that he knows that it's important to me, and feels also that it serves maybe potentially, hopefully, a greater good.

My interest in portraiture is really driven by my fascination to use the genre, to use those photographic tropes that we're fluent in, and pervert them or invert them in some way.

We understand group portraiture and family portraiture so well, and we bring our own projections, our own assumptions, to each portrait.

In the Constructed Family Portrait series I would invite strangers to rented hotel rooms, and I would construct artificial families.

And a lot of times, they were interracial families.

These are ordinary people.

They were not actors.

They weren't model.

I didn't pay anyone.

And I was interested in the uncanny, and that's really why I worked with strangers.

I wanted to find those really unnatural, awkward moments.

The moment that felt palpably wrong, but they're kind of masked behind the smiles.

What would happen was, which was interesting, the family just kind of organically took form.

And it was really dependent and contingent on their dynamic.

So if the woman, for example, tended to be very domineering, it tended to take on a more matriarchal composition.

They intuitively knew the certain behaviors, and that fascinated me.

And there's been really interesting reactions to this series where people feel deceived.

Even once you do know that it's a construct, you still intuitively make those connections and project those narratives onto the family.

It's opening up a conversation about, well, what is family now, or what does family look like, or does it really look like this.

And I find that really interesting it's because of how close we are to the medium, and how we understand the medium because it's such a part of our everyday lives.

There's a lot of ways to photograph a person, and intentions that one could have in making a portrait.

What I'm interested in is almost exclusively that space between us, the relational aspects.

A lot of the photographic portrait sittings that I do are commissions, namely a magazine, for example.

Oftentimes, there's some sort of biographical piece, feature.

In those situations, in the context of a formal sitting, it doesn't work for me to create some idea and then put them on the idea.

I understand that my subject is coming to the sitting with an idea of how they might project their own representation.

So for example, somewhat recently was a commission for GQ magazine.

Sam Brown was a lieutenant serving in Afghanistan.

2008, roadside bomb, and he's critically injured, burned across half of his body, his face.

So I wanted to give him, in a way, the power over his own image.

I took my cable release for my camera and turned it inside to the frame.

Essentially, I invited him into the decision-making process.

It is a choice so let things happen, to not apply a situation on a person.

This kind of self-reflection on the medium and on the idea of representation that's not always with intention or foreknowledge.

It's full of improvisation and intuition and surprise.

I think a compelling portrait makes someone think.

It makes someone think about the person, about what they're thinking about.

As long as they just don't flip right by it, I think it's compelling.

We are part of creating what we perceive.

And in the case of a portrait, to make us see this person anew.

I want to show someone my world.

And if they can relate to that in a way, then that's me relating to them.

How we're communicating photographically is changing.

And I feel like the role of the portrait and the appearance of the portrait has changed, as well.

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