The Authentic Self: Photography and Portraits

What do we learn about a person when we look at their portrait? Can a picture show us who they really are, or is it always a façade? What is the relationship between an image and a self? These are particularly thorny questions when looking at photographs. Though the camera seems to promise an authentic portrayal of human subjects, the situation in practice is much more complicated. This selection of recent acquisitions to the Loeb’s permanent collection explores the ways in which photographs can shape, confer, or interrupt ideas of the authentic “self.” Photographs by Jo Ann Callis, Graciela Iturbide, Marcia Resnick, Tomoko Sawada, Caleb Stein, and Katsumi Watanabe represent a range of perspectives on deeply personal experiences, which include gender identity and expression, efforts to preserve Indigeneity, conformity and individuality, and the often-fine line between disguise and reality. They suggest, in a variety of ways, how photography helps determine our idea of selfhood by constantly redefining it. As soon as a person’s likeness is captured on film, it becomes a photographic object. Sometimes this objectification is heightened through abstraction, further separating self from image. We frequently perform for the camera, hoping that we will appear as we want to be seen and known. These performances thoroughly complicate ideas of authentic selfhood. All too often, an individual portrait that is deemed “authentic” is exploited as representative of an entire culture or community. If a portrait can barely represent a single self, how can it possibly contain many?

This exhibition was generously supported by the Hoene Hoy Photography Fund.