The four personas when shooting a portrait

I loved this wise passage — from the Sunday New York Times Magazine in Behind 'Obama's People' — about the nature of portrait photography, which I've been slowly getting into:

In "Camera Lucida: [Reflections on Photography]," his searching reflection on how photographs convey their meaning and emotional power, Roland Barthes suggests that any time a subject steps in front of a camera to have his portrait taken, four people show up: who that individual thinks he is, who he wants others to think he is, who the photographer thinks the subject is and whom the photographer will try to make use of to bring about his art.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.