001 Portraits + Portrayal

How many times have you changed your Facebook profile picture recently? How many times have you had your picture taken in your entire life? Photographs are so commonplace in today’s society that we can’t imagine a time when there were none. Before photography, the only representations of people one encountered were paintings or etchings and this happened rarely. When we did come across such imagery, they were usually depictions of famous personage or religious subjects not pictures of oneself or family and friends. The invention and industrialization of photography changed forever the way in which individuals comprehended the world and, more importantly, the ways in which they imagined their place within it. The photographer and historian Alan Sekula has suggested that the advent of photography gave shape to a ‘social unconscious’ — an unconscious sense of social hierarchy and one’s place within it. The introductory class will discuss the role of the photographic portrait in contemporary culture in relation to changing ideas about self and transformations in social roles and relations.