Editorial portraiture isn't portraiture in the simplest sense (with a photographer, a subject, and a viewer). Instead, if contains an additional component: The person who commissions the portrait, who has the intended meaning/use in his/her head before the portrait is even taken, and who thus deprives the viewer of the true experience of a portrait. So we see this portrait in a story about an author writing about her tough life in gangs and this portrait of the same author after it all was revealed as a fabrication (I found this on subjectify). So the New York Times did not commission a portrait, they commissioned photographic illustrations.
(to be continued...)
