Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
National Geographic Greatest Portraits tells the story of portrait photography through the eyes-and words-of five accomplished National Geographic photographers. The book showcases images never-before-seen alongside award-winning favorites. New and fascinating text reveals photographers' individual experiences photographing people and their evaluation of NG portraits produced during each decade-from the late-19th century until today. National Geographic Greatest Portraits opens with a beautiful and surprising look at National Geographic's contribution to the knowledge of the world's peoples through photography. Five chapters follow, each spanning approximately two decades and covering an era in world history and photographic style. The chapters are: Before 1930 (Exploring the power of photography), 1930s-1940s (The Great Depression and World War II), 1950s-1960s (Bright colors and perky smiles), 1970s-1980s (Back to realism), 1990s-Present (Everything is relative). Each of these chapters is a portrait of the world.

Amazon.com Review:
Through the years, National Geographic magazine's staff photographers have often elevated stock depictions of "exotic" cultures into haunting glimpses of other lives. In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits presents a century of captivating images of ordinary people from around the world--280 photographs of pleasure, grief, stoicism, shyness and sheer endurance. In thoughtful essays, five photographers frankly assess changing notions of authenticity and discuss their own methods of capturing a stranger's personality on the run. In the beginning, the magazine showed people stiffly posed in their native costumes, viewed as anthropological specimens. Advances in camera technology created a greater degree of intimacy and spontaneity. Then came color film, which ushered in an era dominated by corny themes and perkily posed subjects in brightly hued clothing. The 1970s marked a new honesty in portraiture, a willingness to go beyond the superficial to investigate the small moments that make up daily life everywhere.

Rating : - Captivatingly Beatiful
In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits is a deeply inspiring collection of images, some spontaneously collected and some organized for the sake of composition illustrating the lives of people around the world. Although some photographs, are composed to make a clean, easy to read picture, many others contain an element of "snapshot" quality, which successfully increases the unprompted spirit within each picture.
This book introduced many different lifestyles to me that I had not previously known about or had the chance to research myself. Some photographs show the pristine beauty in certain rituals, and others, the gritty reality of everyday life.
I am inspired to look farther into the cultures of these people I have just perceived. However politically correct or not, I was still spellbound, particularly by a portrait of an Amish teenager working early in the morning out in the fields of a farm. I wonder what his life is like, where this image was taken and who this person is. The book is only a catalyst, exposing the reader to the lives of people from around the world. Another striking image is of a Japanese Geisha taking a cigarette break from applying her makeup. I wonder how the photographers were able to put themselves in these intimate situations and what they said to the subjects in order for them to take the picture.
Overall, I found In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits to be a book full of vibrant, clear, some shocking, some familiar, and all together beautiful images.