Portrait photography is a field rife with clichés. These clichés can’t be ignored, since audience and subject know them well and even expect them to some degree. I play with them instead, as in the example below of the little executive with the bubble pipe, sternly eyeing a visitor to his office. Someday we’ll all be working for this guy. The example top left might be considered too casual by some to be a “portrait.” Some people prefer the leaden look of a child in borrowed clothes sitting inside a shopping center Olan Mills. You can probably tell, I don’t.

At left, the ’40s movie star portrait cliché gets ripped off in this photograph of my father, from 1979.