Q: Misa, what do you mean by “ri-tratto", drawn twice?
A: You arrive with the version of yourself you’ve already drawn.
Then I redraw you, through my eye, my taste, my ethics, my art.
A portrait is not democratic. It is authored.
Ri-Tratto, Drawn Twice, By Two
The Italian word ritratto hides its truth in its structure:
ri-tratto | drawn again, drawn twice.
People think a portrait is a neutral act, an objective recording of a face.
But a portrait is never neutral.
It is a translation, and every translation carries the signature of the translator.
You arrive with the first drawing, your habits, your protection, your curated angles.
The second drawing is mine, born through how I see, how I frame, how I wait, how I process, how I understand presence.
A portrait is not made by the subject.
It is made through the eye of the artist.
The First Drawing: The Self You Build
You come into the studio already “drawn”:
years of posture,
social habits,
shadows you avoid,
angles you trust,
expressions you repeat,
stories you hide behind.
This first drawing is not false, it’s just incomplete.
A protective version of yourself, built carefully and worn daily like the armour you don’t even feel anymore.
But this version is not the portrait.
It is the preparation.
The Second Drawing: The Artist’s Gaze
The second drawing, ri-tratto, is made through the gaze of the photographer.
Not the camera.
Not the lens.
The eye.
The eye that decides:
what is important,
what is dignified,
what is unnecessary,
what is a lie,
what must remain untouched,
what must be revealed.
My portraits are not “taken.” They are interpreted.
The light, the framing, the silence, the micro-second where the truth appears, these choices belong to me.
And later, in post-production, I don’t change faces, I protect them. I remove noise, not identity.
I polish light, not humanity.
I shape coherence, not cosmetics.
This is authorship.
This is the second drawing.
Choosing a Portrait Means Choosing an Artist
This is something people forgot:
a portrait is not a product.
It is a collaboration between reality and a specific artistic vision.
You don’t choose to “have a portrait.” You choose who will draw you.
Who will interpret you.
Who will hold your face in their ethical hands.
Just as families once chose their painter, their Caravaggio, their Goya, their Sargent, today you must choose your photographer.
Because the portrait is always filtered through the artistry, the culture, the sensibility, and the emotional intelligence of the one who draws it.
You are not photographed as you are.
You are photographed as you are seen.
This is the secret people fear and desire in equal measure.
Ri-Tratto Is Not Technique, It Is Interpretation
Anyone can use a camera.
But not everyone can draw.
Technique produces images.
Vision produces portraits.
A real portrait is not the sum of its pixels.
It is the sum of:
attention,
intuition,
timing,
ethics,
silence,
courage,
taste.
This is why AI will never replace portraiture.
It can replicate a face but not interpret a soul.
Final Reflection
A ritratto is always a ri-tratto, you, drawn again.
But not by chance, and not by a machine.
By an artist.
By a gaze that understands you beyond your performance and beneath your armor.
A portrait is not what you look like.
It is who you become when someone with vision dares to draw you, again.
