Max Dupain, Self-portrait, 1930s

burnedshoes:

© Max Dupain, 1930s, Untitled (self portrait)

This photograph is part of the exhibtion ‘What’s in a face? Aspects of portrait photography’ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

“Using photography to depict the face and figure was initially a time-consuming and expensive business. However, the drive to document all things in the world, and rapid technological advances, meant that by the 1880s most people, willing or not and regardless of the photographer’s or their own desires, were documented in some way.

Spurious 19th century ideas to do with what a face could represent exploded in the early 20th century when identity came to be seen as a psychological rather than social phenomenon. Theatricality and performing for the camera, which had existed in photography since its inception, also became much more evident in this period.

In the post-WWII era representations of the face and the body quickly acquired a political and socially aware edge. More recently the face has tended to stand less as an expression of personal experience and more a statement that may signify a set of ideas, whether about the individual, the group or the society at large. Many of these highly constructed images acknowledge and play upon the problematics of the photographic portrait.”

Exhibition dates:
Sep. 24, 2011 – Feb. 5, 2012 at Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

(read more here and here)

(Source: burnedshoes)