We like our portraits taken because they let us see ourselves as others see us — a reflection shaped by light, by timing, by the quiet collaboration between subject and lens. In that brief stillness, something real surfaces: the trace of thought in the eyes, the curve of a gesture, the unspoken truth of being. A portrait doesn’t just capture appearance; it reveals presence, the subtle rhythm of who we are when we stop performing and simply exist.

Perhaps we return to portraits because they hold what memory cannot — the fleeting intersection of self and time. They remind us that we once stood there, alive and unrepeatable, part of a moment that has since dissolved. To be photographed is to preserve that transience, to acknowledge our impermanence while defying it for a heartbeat longer.