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'In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits'

"A fine portrait has the potential to tell something about the spirit of the subject that can be sensed by someone half a world and a different language away. [It says] something universal and simple: This is another person in our world and I'd like you to meet him or her," writes William Albert Allard, one of the essayists in the book, In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits.

A beautiful collection of more than 280 photographs culled from National Geographic's extensive photographic archives, this volume presents a powerful retrospective of portrait photography. Spanning more than ten decades of images and representing the work of more than 150 photographers, In Focus includes never-before-seen photographs alongside award-winning favorites. This rich collection is accompanied by new and fascinating texts written by photographers that reveal their experiences as they captured people in the moment, as well as their evaluations of National Geographic portraits.

Though decades separate the portraits, there's an obvious kinship between, say, an Edward Curtis portrait of a 19th-century Native American and Steve McCurry's arresting 1984 image of an Afghan refugee girl. Such suggestive, provocative juxtapositions abound in these pages, eloquently explored in the text by Leah Bendavid-Val and five of National Geographic's contemporary photographers: Sam Abell, Stuart Franklin, Jodi Cobb, William Albert Allard, and David Alan Harvey.

This collection spans over a century and explores every corner of the globe and every aspect of the portraitist's art. The pictures here represent both the special visions of some of the world's finest photographers and the universal appeal of our shared humanity in all its many moods.

Every great portrait speaks for itself. Its tone may be dignified or defiant, confrontational or conspiratorial, elusive or evocative-- but whatever its mood, it addresses the viewer directly, a visual declaration whose power is immediate and unmistakable.

Printed in 2004.