Portrait art has been recongnized as early as the Ancient Egyptians, who creating images telling stories about their leaders an people, ancient Greek made statues honoring their gods and ideals. In the Middle Ages, the term portrait was created to label the style of artwork which captures the essence of the person or people in it. Portrait drawing and painting was renewed in the Renaissance and showed images of people and families posing for specific works which caputed their likenesses and preserved their memories. For hundres of years, if you wanted a portrait, before photography was a thing, one of the primary jobs for the artist was to make portraits of people. Fast forward to through history the invention of photography in the 1826, portrait studios opened and make getting photographs popular, and easy to obtain for most families. In our present day, portrait arts have changed even more and now with the digital cameras and devices , portraits can be made on a phone or computer using digital photography tools. Some Artsists, duirng this time have found new and inventive ways to create images of people, with colorful abstractions and cartooned images. While other artists have continued to paint images of poeple which carry on the traditions of reallistic art. Thinking about the long history of art, what do you feel makes a portrait important in today's society? What type of portrait or reasons for getting a portrait do you think people think about?