Literally, portraits refers to paintings of a person face with his/her expressions and influence. But practically, portraits are the symbol of dignity for the rich fraternity of the society.

A real portraits displays not only mere image of the person but also his/her personality, designation and temperament. Generally it is a traditional practice that the person looks directly to the photographer so that he may take a perfect snapshot of his face.

The origin of portraits is unknown to mankind but some scholars believes that in ancient times portraits originated from the mighty Roman carvings. Many historians are studying the Moche Culture of Peru which symbolize the mountain age civilization that produced portraits. Some some of most famous portraits of the world are Roman-Egyptian funeral portrait of a young boy, Portrait photograph of Thomas Dilward by Mathew Brady and Moche Ceramic Portrait. Larco Museum Collection. Lima-Peru etc.

According to Wikipedia "One of the best-known portraits in the Western world is Leonardo da Vinci's painting titled Mona Lisa, which is a painting of an unidentified woman. The world's oldest known portrait was found in 2006 in the Vilhonneur grotto near Angoulême and is thought to be 27,000 years old".

In recent time, the Portraits of famous personalities of the world are imprinted specially on bank notes by the Government. Each note of an individual country has it own portraits on it: like in India the portraits of Mahatma Gandhi can be found on Indian notes.

Today while browsing the Pbase database I came across a "Great Collection of bank notes portraits " by CM Kwan. Really a million of thanks to Mr CM Khan for this incredible collection of images. All the copyrights of these images are reserved by him.

A short autobiography of CM Kwan goes like this "Born to be Hong Kong Chinese, I grew up, studied and am working in Hong Kong. I am an engineer by profession but have a natural desire to pursue the arts. I kicked off my photographic journey in October 2005 after buying my first digital-SLR camera for a trip to Austria. Since then, I have started a love affair with photography. After years of continuous learning and practices, I have won recognition. My works have been published in different kinds of books and magazines in various countries. I wish you enjoy my works. Your comments and/or suggestions are most welcome." For viewing more works of CM Kwan - Click here

Stunning bank notes portraits..

Submitted to RB by Angel Fish