Just Think – You walk into a gallery and stop in front of a portrait. It’s someone you don’t know, probably someone long gone. But there’s something about it—you can’t quite explain why—you stay there, staring longer than you expected to. It’s quiet, but this feeling has changed a little, like the air around you. Like the painting’s holding something just out of reach, waiting for you to notice. It’s almost like it wants to tell you something, but it’s up to you to figure out what that is. This is what Kamila Krzyżaniak’s book “Portraits She Said” is about. It’s about looking—but not the usual kind of looking. It’s about seeing more than what’s right in front of us. After all, we start to see deeper and find the story hidden in a glance, a gesture, a tiny detail. Because a portrait isn’t just a face on canvas, it’s a story.
A portrait isn’t just a Picture of Someone. It’s a Record of Time, Emotion, and Relationships.
Kamila Krzyżaniak puts it in a way: a portrait is a conversation. Almost unspoken. You stand there, staring at this face from who knows when, and after a while, it’s like they’re staring right back. And that’s when it hits you—who is this person? What’s behind that look in their eyes? And why does it feel like they’re keeping a secret you’re supposed to figure out? It is something that we can see or feel without knowing art history. In her book, Krzyżaniak writes that a portrait isn’t a selfie. You snap a selfie fast, add a filter, post it, and you’re done. But a portrait? It’s the result of hours, sometimes days, spent together. The artist studies the model and the model—whether they mean to or not—reveals something of themselves—sometimes something they didn’t plan to reveal. Krzyżaniak points out that a portrait shows everything important: the person, the time they lived in, and the relationship between them and the artist. And sometimes, it shows things that were never meant to be seen.
How Do You Read a Portrait? Don’t Overthink It. Just Look.
Krzyżaniak doesn’t act like an art history professor. She doesn’t expect you to memorise dates, styles, or periods. Instead, she offers a simple tip: look and listen to what the painting tells you. Where do you start? With the eyes. Eyes tell you more than any caption. Are they calm or nervous? Does the person stare straight at you or look away? Then, move on to the hands. Are they relaxed or tense? Gestures reveal as much as facial expressions. And then the background. Nothing there is random. A book, a landscape, a curtain, a colour—it all matters. Krzyżaniak says you don’t need to know all the symbols. You need to start asking questions. “Why?” Why that colour, why that gesture, why that lighting? The answers will come. Or they won’t. And that’s the beauty of it.
Portraits That Reveal the Truth—or Hide It
One of the most interesting things Krzyżaniak points out is that a portrait doesn’t always tell the truth. Sometimes, it plays tricks. Sometimes it’s just a mask. The artist might not paint what’s there—they paint what they want you to see. Her book discusses women who appear calm, composed, and almost serene. But if you look a little longer and pay attention, there’s something else. There’s something in their eyes. Go and look closer. Their bodies give them away. There’s a tightness in their shoulders, a tension they can’t entirely hide, no matter how confident they’re trying to appear. But the truth is that sometimes, the portrait reveals more about the artist than the person they’re painting. It’s the artist’s hand that decides what you see—their feelings, point of view, and version of who this person is, whether they want to flatter, expose, or tell a different story altogether.
Why Does This Matter? Because When You Look at Them, You See Yourself
Kamila Krzyżaniak believes a portrait is a mirror. What you see in someone else’s face often says something about you. Maybe you recognise your anxiety. Your curiosity. Perhaps you find a kind of understanding. That’s why we keep coming back to portraits. We’re looking for something familiar. And even if a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years have passed, the emotions are still the same. People still fear the same things. They still want to be remembered. They still want to be understood. They still want someone to see them.
“Portraits She Said”—A Book for Anyone Who’s Not Afraid to Look Closely
This isn’t a textbook. It’s a book that makes you pause and look with more attention. Kamila Krzyżaniak doesn’t hand you straightforward answers. She’s more likely to say, “Look again.” And suddenly, you start to notice things you missed the first time you looked. The portraits she writes about stop being pictures because she wants them to become people. You feel like you know them, even if you don’t. And that’s the power of this book. It’s about people, about seeing, about paying attention. And in today’s world, we could all use more of that.
Written by Grace Crossmann
Book available to purchase on Amazon link below:
