Every image is in some way a “portrait,” not in the way that it would reproduce the traits of a person, but in that it pulls and draws (this is the semantic and etymological sense of the word), in that it extracts something, an intimacy, a force.
To write or speak is to communicate. To communicate is to share meanings, make them ‘common’ to all participants in the discourse. (The etymological root of communication means ‘common. ’)