portraiture vs fashion

what differentiates portraiture, fashion, and glamour photography. is fashion

and glamour a subset of portraiture, or are they completely different.

Portraiture is about the person being photographed.

Fashion photography is about selling clothes.

"Glamour" photography is about selling the illusion of sex appeal.

Portraiture is at is purest a photograph of character. Who she/he is, what he does, what he is like, how she /he is seen by herself and by her closests and colleagues. A portrait is more than just geometry or shape.<p>

Fashion is a subset of commercial photography. It's about selling commodities of futility, way of life or mag in the form of "editorials".<p>

Glamour started in 1920-30 in Hollywood. There was need for photos of stars staged in a glamorous way. Since then it spread in form. One important node was a painter by the name of Vargas who started the kind of sweet half nudity which then was further developed by Playboy to softcore. Today glam means something a little less than soft porn. The differentiating thing is that with porno the primary function is to arouse, with glam it is to form somekind of fantasy within the "acceptable".<p>

Why I find the categorizing important is that a good glmaour or fashion photo is not necessarily a good portrait and vice versa. Photo categories are defined mostly by the function of the photo. The goodness of the phot is ultimately measured by how well it fullfills its function. A good commercial photo sells products, a good portrait tells about the character and a good glamour photo creates a fantasy.