Photo Friday: Portraiture
Day 064 – September 24, 2011
From Photo Friday, this week’s photographic theme is “Portraiture“.
Rather than offer up a portrait of my countenance, let me show you an artifact I saw during my Spanish class outing to Museo Larco, a museum located in Lima that specializes in pre-Columbian art. More information about this wonderful museum can be found here.
My apologies if I do not label this artifact correctly. I believe it comes from the Nasca culture. It is a piece of pottery that was of a traditional design among the pre-Columbian cultures of Peru. It is a vessel to hold liquid and the spout is quite distinctive. Archeologists (I believe…and I could be way off base here) can actually date the time period of a pottery piece based on the design of its spout.
What impressed me more about this particular piece of pottery was its incredible life-like visage.
Here's Looking at You, Kid
To me, it almost appears that someone, many centuries ago, sat patiently while the artist sculpted their face into clay.
Posted on April 27, 2012, in Peru, Photography and tagged Museo Larco, Peru, photography, portraiture. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
An interesting take on this challenge. Wish I had thought about posting a picture of sculpture or a painting of a person. I only thought of photographs of people and immediately dismissed today’s challenge as the only photos of people I take are snapshots of family that I don’t typically post online. This is an interesting artifact and does look very lifelike. How difficult that must be to do!
I have the sneaking suspicion that the technique used to make this type of pottery appear so like-like and polished has been lost (could be wrong). I am guessing that it is quite difficult to make this type of artifact.
I’m with you. I don’t post photos of family members so I’m glad I had this in the archives.