My love for photographic portraiture began in my teens. When I was a sophomore in high school, my aunt presented me with a copy of the Karsh Portfolio book, a monumental collection of black & white portraits by Canadian portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh. His work served as inspiration for the portraits I shot for my high school’s yearbooks over the next three years, such as the 1968 portrait I did of my classmate John Hoes with local barber Curley Leroux.

I also became enamored by the work of Irving Penn who pioneered the concept of neutral ground portraiture, in which the subject is removed from their environment and isolated in front of a gray backdrop. Penn used this method to great effect when he photographed the native peoples of New Guinea for Harper’s Bazaar Magazine. My 2007 portrait of musician Robert Resnik follows this tradition.

In college, I discovered the work of Richard Avedon, who was a phenomenon in the fashion photography world. He redefined the role of fashion photography and portraiture. It was as if his famous subjects were being introduced to the public for the first time. In the fall of my senior year, I had the opportunity to meet Avedon at his New York studio. His revolutionary portraits had a significant influence on my own work. My 1975 portrait of Native American Cordelia Garret reflects that influence.

I still shoot my still portraits on black & white film, an expensive, slow, and impractical way of working, but it gives me an organic look that I haven’t been able to duplicate with a digital camera. I make digital scans of my negatives, and everything from that point forward is in the digital domain, which gives me the best of both worlds.

My portrait lighting approach would best be described as minimalist. I use just one light. My early work from the sixties often utilized window light, and my one-light method reminds me of it. Portrait photographers often use two and sometimes three lights, but every time I go down that road the images look contrived to me. I don’t want the viewer to be consciously aware of the lighting in my portraits, but I do want them drawn in by the beauty of it.

I always light my subjects from the right side, contrary to common practice. For some reason, my mind’s eye prefers it that way.

There are other aspects of my portraits that set them apart, such as the straight-on alignment of the face. We rarely present ourselves this way in real life, as we tend to avoid such an overt posture. Often, I find that when a face becomes perfectly aligned, the image becomes timeless, capturing a life rather than just a moment. — Todd R. Lockwood, Burlington, Vermont, January 2024