Portrait Photography

November 28, 2025

Annie Leibovitz’s ‘Women’ Book Is a Daring Quest Into the Heart of Contemporary Womanhood

For Annie Leibovitz, there is perhaps no more fruitful of a subject than women. “Women are a work in progress,” the photographer remarked in a 2016 interview with the New York Times. “To my dying day, I’ll be doing these photographs.” If the work of photographing women is forever ongoing, then Phaidon’s reprint of her 1999 classic, Women, is an ambitious continuation of that mission.

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September 24, 2025

Intimate Portraits of the Nenets Capture the Faces of Indigenous People in the Russian Arctic

In 2022, Natasha Yankelevich traveled to Yamal for the first time. Nestled in northwest Siberia, the region is remote, icy, and has been “historically cut off from the rest of Russia by endless swamps,” per the Moscow-based photographer. It also happens to be home to the Nenets, a Samoyedic ethnic group native to the Russian Arctic.

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August 12, 2025

Kindergarteners in 1949 Drew Their Dads from Memory, and Life Magazine Captured the Results

In 1949, Doris Morcom, a kindergarten teacher at Sedgwick Elementary School in West Hartford, Connecticut, had a playful idea for the school’s upcoming Father’s Night. She asked her young students to draw their dads entirely from memory. The resulting portraits were both surprisingly accurate and hilariously imperfect, capturing the way each child saw their dad in their mind’s eye.

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June 12, 2025

Powerful Portraits of Prestigious Members of The Explorers Club [Interview]

For the past decade, photographer Felix Kunze stepped inside the prestigious world of The Explorers Club to document its accomplished members. The multidisciplinary club, formed in 1904, celebrates field research in all its forms and counts astronauts, archeologists, and intrepid adventurers among its members. After photographing an event with the club, Kunze asked permission to set up a small studio at their annual dinner, and the rest was history.

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My Modern Met

Celebrating creativity and promoting a positive culture by spotlighting the best sides of humanity—from the lighthearted and fun to the thought-provoking and enlightening.