Confronting the Portrait
Confronting the Portrait is a series of black-and-white photographs made during eight years of travel across the globe. Each portrait is an encounter-direct, unembellished, and grounded in presence Through the exchange of gazes, the photographs invite us not only to see another person, but to experience something of their humanity.
Photographs made in Kashmir, Cuba, India, Haiti, Myanmar, Vietnam, Namibia, Morocco and the United States • 2008-2025
Kashmir Girl Rezan, Kashmir 2008 Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
Man contemplating India, 2009 Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
Tattooed Woman #2 Myanmar, 2015 Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
Man with Cigarette Havana, Cuba 2014 Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
Man with attitude Havana, Cuba 2014 Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
Man with advice Jonestown, MS USA Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
Indian Gentleman India 2008 Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
Farmer Myanmar, 2014 Archival pigment print; Available in limited editions
Cigar Man #3 Havana, Cuba 2014 Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
Woman with Cigar #1 Havana, Cuba 2012 Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
Cigar Man #1 Havana, Cuba 2012 Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
Temple Custodian Hanoi, Vietnam 2011 Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
Young Boy #1 Milot, Haiti 2010 Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
Young Girl with Braids Namibia 2018 Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
Camel Driver#1 Saraha Desert, Morocco 2024 Archival pigment print. Available in limited editions.
About the
series
As a documentary photographer, my work begins with observation, guided by a deeper impulse to reveal what often goes unseen. In Confronting the Portrait, the camera becomes a mediator-between myself and the person before me, and ultimately between that person and the viewer.
Made over eight years of traveling and photographing across the globe, these portraits are not about performance or pretense. They are about presence. Each photograph begins with an encounter: a face, a gesture, a gaze, and the brief connection that occurs when someone allows me to enter their world.
I want the photographs to retain the honesty of those encounters. The people I photograph may live thousands of miles from us, within cultures and circumstances very different from our own, yet I am less interested in those differences than in what connects us.
Confronting the Portrait is therefore not only about the person being photographed. It is also about you, the viewer. My hope is that, through these photographs, you might feel something of what I felt standing there—the invisible connection that emerges when we truly see another person and allow ourselves, in return, to be seen.
Available for Acquisition
Fine-art archival pigment prints
35 × 47 inches • Edition of 3
17 × 22 inches • Edition of 12
Signed and numbered by the artist
Certificate of authenticity included
Different places. Different lives. Shared humanity.
Confronting the Portrait is part of Jay Seldin’s
four-decade exploration of people and the worlds they inhabit.