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Nikon Advertorial: Guiding Light

May 03, 2012 - Nikon Mentor Series Photographer Mark Alberhasky Will Pack Light Thanks to his New Nikon 1 More »

Photo © Arno Rafael Minkkinen

Step x Step: Auto Focus - Contemporary Photographic Artists Photograph Themselves

March 15, 2011 - “In many ways the author of a self-portrait is always presenting an impossible image, as he or she can never mimetically represent the physical reality that other people see,” explains Susan Bright in the introduction to Auto Focus, her international survey of 75 contemporary photographers known for their work with self-portraits.

Organized by five different categories of representation—Autobiography, Body, Masquerade, Studio and Album, Performance—and containing an extensive analysis of the discipline, Bright’s inquiry into the photographic representation of self offers valuable insight—from early history to current trends—about the passion artists have for putting themselves in the picture.

“It is a compulsion for almost anyone with a camera, artist or not, to turn it on him or herself,” Bright explains, “and a photographer or artist who has never taken a picture of himself or herself is a rarity. There is always a ready model, and the self is a fascinating subject, as a plethora of recent Web sites dedicated to self-portraiture so clearly illustrate.”

The three examples presented here merely scratch the surface of Bright’s compilation of artists who use a wide variety of creative strategies and photographic techniques when exploring their identity through art.
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