Pic related is the portrait of a Germain painter Otto Dix by the German photographer Hugo Erfurth.

And holy fucking shite, look at the depth, look at the texture of skin, look at how he manipulated the color of shirt, look at that shine, look at that balance, it feels like a statue so alive that it doesn't feels like a photo. How someone can be this good? This shit mogs contemporary portraiture out of the water. Not to sound like a chud but it really feels like photography has degenerated.

Man I am sick of window lit portraiture and snapshitting. Where one should start if he want to learn to this type of studio wizardry? Where one should start with lighting? How does that happens?