Artists and Their Relationship with the Camera
It is an unusual and pleasant surprise when an exhibition triggers recognition and reevaluation of your own preconceptions. Such was the effect of 'Love at First Sight'. With this project, curator Sanja Pahoki indicated that the portrait and self-portrait cannot be dismissed as an antiquated genre of art history. Shown at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in late 2002, 'Love at First Sight' sent out a challenge to the relevancy of portrait photography today.
The importance of the portrait is less apparent to those of us outside Sydney, beyond the reach of the Portia Geach Memorial Award and the Archibald Prize, or to visitors to contemporary art galleries where genres are less evident. The tradition of the portrait genre invests such images with an historicity, so that associations and meanings connect with the past, rather than the present. Artists have employed the portrait and its qualities to represent their own character, figures such as Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo or Paula Modersohn Becker; or they have worked with portraiture in reflecting contemporary humanity, think of Chuck Close and Elizabeth Peyton. Recently, the legacy of portraiture has been employed in playful or contradictory ways to create meaning, as in the work of Cindy Sherman or Yasumasa Morimura. And the form is no stranger to sensation or controversy, as Sarah Lucas, Tracey Ernin or Marcus Harvey (whose painting Myra, of convicted child murderer Myra Hindley, caused a stir in the United Kingdom) are well aware.
While the demands and support of patrons and the commemoration of notable sitters that historically underpinned portraiture continue to a small degree today, the trope of realism is essential to the persistence of portraits. This... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline