Since when has the word "Portrait" become synonymous with "Photo of a young fashionable female"

[elmontanero]

Highly recommend https://www.instagram.com/martinschoeller/?hl=en on the 'gram. They are all similar images but the interviews that accompany them are fantastic.
I'm a fan of letting images speak by themselves, but Schoeller seems to convey compassion to the subjects.
You can't do better than Karsh or Penn... but remember Penn started with Vogue. Nothing wrong at all working first with a pleasing subject. His portraits both in and out of the fashion world (and everything else he did) wow me.
I like Seliger and Rolston (his exhibit at the Fahey Klein in L.A. was excellent) but they focus on famous people - and that causes it's own problems in my head.
We like things we like. Wether it be attractive or character that we want to take a picture of.

 

[jtk]

Penn didn't start with fashion, he was a non-fashion photographer as a teen. And (to my knowledge) he never produced the prurient neo porn that sometimes pops up even on Media.

 

[hoffy]

Is this not a portrait?

It's a portrait.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

When I hear the word, bimbo, two things come to mind. It means to be skint, in Japanese... and it was the name of the birthday clown on the Uncle Bobby TV show when I was a kid...
When I think of portraits, I think of the work of Karsh.

 

[Vaughn]

So, if all these images of young nude females are to be considered 'soft-porn', does that make those participating in Model Mayhem or otherwise charge to model, sex-workers?

 

[markjwyatt]

Attractive young females cannot help that they are

1. young
2. [considered] attractive

They also make up a sizeable % of any population (10-20% maybe). Since a lot of photographers are male, this is also understandable. Focus in one part of your life may extend into others.

That being said, I do like to share this image that my dad took in the 1940s when he was attending CA Bach's photography program at Fremont High . These were some of his classmates: