When there was no civilization in human history the ancient Homo Sapience cave people tried to draw images in cave. Their amazing visual thoughts is today’s cave painting. In the ancient time the pictures were not metaphoric. They draw what they had seen. They were the first Environmental Portrait artist. From their work we’re now familiar with the mighty Mammoth or Giant Tigers. And today’s modern Archaeologist proved those gigantic creatures were present in pre civilized period. They’ve fossils of those creatures now.
Apart from the cave people the early painters draw and sketch human portraits on their canvas. Those days solvent people tried to capture their portraits with the help of the painters. Oil-ink was widely used for this work. On those pre historic photographic period painters were the portrait artist for the rich people. Those portraits are still in our museum. So the modern portraiture concept from the paintings where portrait was exact replica of human face and gesture.
From the history of photography early photographers were painters mostly. They adopt photography or photographic technique to reduce their time on drawing human portraits. Photography came to their door as Prometheus with fire. In early age photography was the main tool to draw portraits.
Now in this modern era we’ve so many tools to draw or to capture. As capturing a moment is very easy now so the definition or purpose of photography or any visual arts is changed today. Portraiture of any kind is more metaphoric and dynamic. So today’s Portraiture is not only capturing the right moment and expression but a philosophical explanation of situation and environment and politics. Portraits is not only the reflection of time but also a story now. Behind all portraits there is lots of colorful stories now. Even a footprint of a labor is meaningful now a days because that is the expression of environment belonging