Two Registers: Jonathan Althaus

Two Registers: Jonathan Althaus (Los Angeles Corporate Headshots Rory Lewis 2026)

Some sittings ask for one portrait. Jonathan Althaus asked, without quite saying so, for two.

Jonathan is a Deputy Public Defender with the Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender. It is work that rarely receives the attention it deserves: standing beside people the state has accused, often at the most frightening moment of their lives, and making sure the system that judges them actually has to do its job. Advocacy of that kind requires a particular double nature. You have to be entirely credible before a bench and entirely human to the person sitting next to you. That duality became the shape of the session.

The advocate

The first portrait is the courtroom face, though not the cold one. Jonathan arrived in a single, deliberate colour: an oxblood suit, a shirt a shade brighter, and a paisley tie that holds both tones together in black and crimson. Dressing in one colour is a confident choice, and an old one. The great Renaissance portraits of cardinals by Raphael and Titian are essentially studies in a single red, where the cloth does as much talking as the face. A tonal ensemble keeps the eye moving upward, and here it delivers you straight to the smile.

Two Registers: Jonathan Althaus (Los Angeles Corporate Headshots Rory Lewis 2026)

That smile matters. A public defender’s first job with a client is trust, and I wanted the image to carry warmth without losing authority. The light is kept clean and generous, lifting the eyes and letting the texture of the moustache and beard read without drama. The mottled grey canvas behind him gives the colour somewhere to sit; against anything brighter, that burgundy would have shouted.

The man

Then the jacket came off, a black leather shirt went on, and the smile went with it.

The second frame is quieter and more direct. Same backdrop, same light, but a completely different conversation. The curls fall forward, a single silver cross catches the light at the ear, and the expression settles into something steady and unperformed. Where the first portrait says you can trust me with your case, the second simply says this is who I am. I find these pairs among the most honest work I make, because no one is only their profession, and the gap between the two images is where the person actually lives.

Caravaggio understood this better than anyone. His saints are labourers and his apostles have dirt under their fingernails; the sacred and the ordinary occupy the same body. A lawyer in leather with a cross in his ear is not so far from that tradition.

Thank you, Jonathan, for an afternoon of good conversation and for being willing to show both faces.

Professional portraits and headshots are available by appointment at the Downtown Los Angeles studio.