000001A face is not a subject. The subject is the response—an expression shaped by the conditions of an encounter. These conditions may be given or imposed; the response remains inevitable. Facing a face is the act of recognising, framing, and capturing its consequence.

When the face is not a subject... 

The response is inevitable.
Its circumstances may arise incidentally, be constructed, or be imposed. Their origin is irrelevant. What matters is the collision with a performer and the transformation it produces.

There is no direct approach. No expression is requested or prescribed, although its appearance is anticipated.

A face may smile, frown, open its mouth, or imitate a recognisable manifestation of emotion. Expression is a considerably more complex configuration. Features, microexpressions, tensions, wrinkles, gaze, light, shadow, makeup when present, and other elements converge at a moment to form it. A grimace may participate in an expression. What is rejected is the equation of the two.

Expression is what becomes available to the composition. The portrait is not a record of the face, but a composition in which that expression becomes the primary subject.