Portraiting · by Bob Wollheim
Ideas, doubts, dreams, frustrations.
Clarity, a path, and your portrait.
You arrive with all of that. You leave with this. One morning, three hours, together.
You arrive with all of that. You leave with this. One morning, three hours, together.
Some conversations change the direction of a life. Not because someone gave advice. Because, for once, someone saw you whole.
I have had these conversations all my life. People arrive lost, sometimes hopeless. They talk. I listen for the pattern running underneath it all, the one that is easier for someone else to see than for you. Slowly, the confusion turns into a map.
Hundreds of them. On sofas, over coffee, with nothing written down. They worked, and then they faded, because nothing stayed.
Portraiting is that conversation, with a form and a memory.
Bob Wollheim, founder of CTLZ. About Bob →
I often go back to our coffee at Santa Maria to reorient myself. As if it were a Waze “redirect” button.
I prepare for you, listening for hours before we meet. Then, one morning, we go deep: into what you are good at, what is in the way, what you are afraid of. It is intense, for both of us. I draw as we talk, and the map takes shape in front of you. At the end, I make your portrait.
You leave lighter, with clarity, and some peace. A few days later, a box arrives to make it last: your portrait, with your key words, for your home. And everything we mapped, for the days you need to find your way again.
The portrait is only the visible part.
It happens in a photo studio in Brooklyn, New York, on my trips around the world, and online when it makes sense. It costs US$5,000. We talk first: not every moment is the right one.
Write to me. I answer myself.