Environmental Portraiture is a genre in photography and the photos under this genre feature people in their working environments, typically with the person in the foreground facing the camera head on and with elements of their occupation/lifestyle in the background.

Here are some examples:

The purpose of environmental photography is to capture and illuminate each individual’s character and portray the essence of their personality. It is a way of expressing the person from the way they live and what role they play in our society. It is also good that these photos are taken in real places so it has a sense of realness, as opposed to being in a studio where it isn’t in the real world.

The background is a key element and plays an important part in the photos too because it gives even more detail and information about the person. For example, the picture with the woman and the child is seen in, what appears to be, the middle of nowhere with rubbish scattered everywhere, a wasteland. You can see very clearly that the woman is unhappy, not too different to the area around her. It is also implied that these people are in a third world country if you look closely at their clothes, the baby being makeshift-strapped to the woman’s back and the dirt on their bodies. I believe the purpose of this photograph is to show us the different parts of the world and how different other people’s lifestyles are in comparison to ours.