Does a portrait have to include the face?

[cphoniball]

I was looking through some photographer's portfolio's the other day when I ran across a pretty interesting one. This photographer did the normal portrait and wedding shots, but about half of her portraits had an interesting aspect - they didn't have the subject(s) face(s) in the picture at all. Instead the pictures focused on the hands, the body position, the feet. At first I was kind of confused, but it gave the pictures a different mood - and even though there wasn't any kind of expression, as there was no face, the pictures still had a definite mood. By the way the hands held someone else you could tell they were in love, or the way two pairs of legs were stretched out you could tell they were perfectly relaxed.

Has anyone else ran across this type or portraiture? What did you think of it?

Personally, the pictures intrigued me, and I'm going to experiment with compositions like it at my next shoot.

This is the photographers website http://www.sarahrhoadsphoto.com/index2.php?ver=v1 The "laugh" gallery has quite a few of the shots I was talking about.

[save_alkaline]

i prefer these types of portraits to the typical portraits of a face. i, personally, have issues with seeing myself and it makes me feel that others have issues seeing themselves whether or not they do. in addition to the fact that i like the mood (as you mentioned) that you can put across using just the body. the face takes a lot of the attention otherwise.

[wulf]

Adding a link to the photographer's website is fine.

I think there is a lot of room for portraiture that doesn't include faces. Many of the self portraits I took for my fiftytwo project don't have my face but I tried to make them all say something about me, even if I only physically appeared as a hand, a foot or a tiny reflection.

Wulf