Comparisons and the Odious: Fakery, Actual and ConceptualA number of years ago I had a portrait commission that still makes me chuckle. I was asked to make a family portrait of a single mother and her three grown daughters, all of whom were unusually attractive and independent ladies from Texas. The youngest daughter, who might have been the most beautiful of them all, had just gotten married, to an earnest and ambitious suitor whom I'll call Fred. The five of them were to be the subjects of the portrait.

I set up my lights on the mother's veranda, and began playing with various arrangements of poses. Spirits were high and the banter was flowing. At one point, one of the daughters mentioned a friend of hers who had had occasion to airbrush an ex-husband out of the family picture, and she suggested that Fred might go in the back and towards the outside edge, just in case her sister's marriage didn't work and he ever had to be airbrushed out. This provoked gales of laughter, in whic...