Introduction: Portraiture Beyond (Self)-Representation (original) (raw)
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Oxford Philosophical Concepts: Self-Knowledge, ed. Ursula Renz, Oxford University Press, 2017
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An Anthropology of " self ": pondering on the use of the self-portrait in contemporary photography.
An Anthropology of "self": Pondering on the use of the self-portrait in contemporary photography. "Suddenly, as if a healing fate had cured me of an old blindness with very fast and great results, I hold my head high, away from my anonymous life and towards the clear knowledge of my existence. And I see that everything that I have done, thought and been is some kind of mistake and madness. I wonder in what I have managed not to see. Strange what I was and what, in the end, I see I am not. I observe, like an extension of the sun bursting through the clouds, my past life; and I notice, in metaphysical awe, how all my most calculated gestures, my most clear ideas, and my most logical purposes, were in the end, nothing than innate drunkenness, natural madness, great ignorance. I did not even act. I was acted upon. I was not the actor, but their gestures.
The Aesthetics of Portraiture : An Annotated Reading List
Portraits are everywhere. We think we know what they are for and what they do. They depict what people look like and they capture or distil their particular identity. But in everyday life, it might be argued, portraits trade in stereotypes and clichés. And if the advent of identity politics has demonstrated any- thing, it is how deeply problematic it is to think that identi- ty can be ‘captured’ or ‘distilled’. This reading list encourages a more analytical understanding of portraiture as an artistic genre, with particular reference to feminist/gender/disability/ ethnic/post-colonial issues. How have artists pushed at the li- mits and conventions of the type, how are people represented in portraits, and how have philosophers understood its essen- tial nature? The list aims to address central topics in aesthetics and philosophy of art through the genre of portraiture, adding relevant insights from art history and art theory, and thus ena- bling students to acquire a more sophisticated understanding of what making and looking at portraits actually involves.
https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-reconfiguring-the-portrait.html
As technological practices of the portrait have proliferated across the media ecosystem in recent years, this canonical genre of identity and representation has provoked a new wave of scholarly attention and artistic experimentation. This collection of essays explores the stakes of that seemingly anachronistic comeback. It reframes portraiture as a set of cultural techniques for the dynamic performance of subjects entangled in specific medial configurations. Tracking the portrait across a wide range of media – literature, drawings, paintings, grave stelae, films, gallery installations, contemporary music videos, deep fakes, social media, video games, and immersive VR interfaces – the contributors interrogate and transform persistent metaphysical and anthropocentric assumptions inherited from traditional notions of portraiture.
The Implications of an Ethnographic Approach to Portraiture
The dissertation explores contemporary portraiture by two well-known photographers who have used an ethnographic approach to their work. Beach Portraits by Rineke Dijkstra and Signs That Say by Gillian Wearing are analysed using theories outlined by Roland Barthes, Richard Brilliant and Julian Stallabrass. The ethnography of the late 19th century is known to be objectifying resulting in the “control” of the subject. The role of ethnography within these contemporary portraits is also seen as objectifying. Regarding objectification, representation and identity this paper explores the methods, origins, and approaches within the artists work. A number of their images are compared and discussed answering the following questions, are the methods they have used an effective way of revealing the subject’s identity? How can we have a universal method deal with the specifics of an individual and unique identities? How can these groups of works overcome or salvage uniqueness out of seemingly shared identities? The paper shows that by using the ethnographic method it suppresses individuality under social masking and self-representation. To overcome this dilemma the investigation reveals that the subject’s handwritten text from Wearing’s Signs series adds individuality; in other words, it is the text that dilutes the universality of the pose revealing their unique identities.