ill. no.

1 p2
colour High Res

AUTO FOCUS
THE SELF-PORTRAIT
IN CONTEMPORARY
PHOTOGRAPHY
SUSAN BRIGHT

The Monacelli Press

 CONTENTS

This book is dedicated to Mike and Ruby Reynolds.

INTRODUCTION UNCANNY LIKENESS:
With special thanks to all the artists and galleries
who so kindly assisted me and gave their time
PHOTOGRAPHERS PHOTOGRAPHING THEMSELVES 6
and energy to the project. Thanks must also go to
the following: Pat Binder, Camilla Brown, Alejandro
Castellote, Alasdair Foster, Gerhard Haupt, Jackie
Higgins, Graham Howe, Allison Kave, Carrie Levy,
Weibke Lister, Paul Moakley, Alison Norstrom,
Jeesun Park, Aaron Shulman, Anne Sorensen,
01 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 22
Joe Strubble, Toshie Takeuchi, Hedy Van Erp,
James Welling and Richard West. And my grateful
thanks to all those at Thames & Hudson, especially
Jacky Klein, Ginny Liggitt, Katie Morgan, Anna Perotti
02 BODY 60
and Diana Bullitt Perry.
03 MASQUERADE 98
Copyright © 2010 Susan Bright

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by

The Monacelli Press, a division of Random House, Inc.
04 STUDIO AND ALBUM 140
05 PERFORMANCE 180
First published simultaneously in 2010 in the United
Kingdom by Thames & Hudson, Ltd., London and
by The Monacelli Press, a division of Random House,
Inc., New York.

The Monacelli Press and colophon are trademarks of

Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bright, Susan, 1969–

Notes 218
Auto focus : the self-portrait in contemporary
photography / Susan Bright.
Further Reading 218
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index. List of Illustrations 221
ISBN 978-1-58093-300-1 (hardcover)
1. Portrait photography. 2. Self-portraits. Index 224
3. Photographers—Portraits. I. Title.
TR681.P56B75 2010
770—dc22
2010004383

Printed and bound in [tbc]

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First edition

www.monacellipress.com
 CONTENTS

This book is dedicated to Mike and Ruby Reynolds.

INTRODUCTION UNCANNY LIKENESS:
With special thanks to all the artists and galleries
who so kindly assisted me and gave their time
PHOTOGRAPHERS PHOTOGRAPHING THEMSELVES 6
and energy to the project. Thanks must also go to
the following: Pat Binder, Camilla Brown, Alejandro
Castellote, Alasdair Foster, Gerhard Haupt, Jackie
Higgins, Graham Howe, Allison Kave, Carrie Levy,
Weibke Lister, Paul Moakley, Alison Norstrom,
Jeesun Park, Aaron Shulman, Anne Sorensen,
01 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 22
Joe Strubble, Toshie Takeuchi, Hedy Van Erp,
James Welling and Richard West. And my grateful
thanks to all those at Thames & Hudson, especially
Jacky Klein, Ginny Liggitt, Katie Morgan, Anna Perotti
02 BODY 60
and Diana Bullitt Perry.
03 MASQUERADE 98
Copyright © 2010 Susan Bright

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by

The Monacelli Press, a division of Random House, Inc.
04 STUDIO AND ALBUM 140
05 PERFORMANCE 180
First published simultaneously in 2010 in the United
Kingdom by Thames & Hudson, Ltd., London and
by The Monacelli Press, a division of Random House,
Inc., New York.

The Monacelli Press and colophon are trademarks of

Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bright, Susan, 1969–

Notes 218
Auto focus : the self-portrait in contemporary
photography / Susan Bright.
Further Reading 218
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index. List of Illustrations 221
ISBN 978-1-58093-300-1 (hardcover)
1. Portrait photography. 2. Self-portraits. Index 224
3. Photographers—Portraits. I. Title.
TR681.P56B75 2010
770—dc22
2010004383

Printed and bound in [tbc]

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First edition

www.monacellipress.com
 ‘In retrospect, I have actually noticed that I reached for the camera
more readily when I was unhappy. I worked the pain into a beautiful
object that could be looked at detached from myself, and this consoled
me a little. In a way it’s banal, but it is as if art legitimates grief. I think
in this way a lot of artists make indecent use of their own unhappy lives
as material for their art.’

56 AUTOBIOGRAPHY BROTHERUS 57
 ‘In retrospect, I have actually noticed that I reached for the camera
more readily when I was unhappy. I worked the pain into a beautiful
object that could be looked at detached from myself, and this consoled
me a little. In a way it’s banal, but it is as if art legitimates grief. I think
in this way a lot of artists make indecent use of their own unhappy lives
as material for their art.’

56 AUTOBIOGRAPHY BROTHERUS 57
 ZHANGHUAN
‘The body is the only direct way
through which I can know society
and society comes to know me.
The body is the proof of identity.
The body is language.’

Homeland (2001) is a series of photographs of a performance

of the same title. Carefully composed for the camera, these
images function as stills, documenting actions in which
the artist pushes his body to extremes. Zhang has always
used his body as a metaphor for the Chinese people and
to comment on the rapid social and economic changes
taking place in China. His performances and the resulting
photographs are radical, politically provocative and, at times,
masochistic. In his ongoing and explicit use of his body as a
vehicle for self-expression, Zhang tests society’s boundaries
of acceptability in artwork.
For this series of photographs Zhang – who has worked
extensively outside of China – returned to his native land,
to the city of Qufu in the Shandong Province. This province
has one of the largest populations in the country and some
of the poorest living conditions. The quickly developing
cities attract farmers and young labourers looking for work,
who often abandon their land and villages, leaving behind
the elderly, children and increasingly depleted farmland.
Zhang has said that on returning to China, he looked at
the sky and the earth and found them to be ‘indignant
and soulful’, so he created the performance in an attempt to
alter that state. He turned his body into something animal,
disguising it entirely – apart from his face – with large slabs
of raw meat that grotesquely exaggerate his shape. In the
images of him burrowing into the ground like an animal,
Zhang’s meat ‘suit’ creates a protective sheath around him,
but when he stands up, the blood red casing makes it seem
as if Zhang’s skin has been flayed.

Left above, left and opposite: Zhang Huan, Homeland, 2001.

64 BODY
 ZHANGHUAN
‘The body is the only direct way
through which I can know society
and society comes to know me.
The body is the proof of identity.
The body is language.’

Homeland (2001) is a series of photographs of a performance

of the same title. Carefully composed for the camera, these
images function as stills, documenting actions in which
the artist pushes his body to extremes. Zhang has always
used his body as a metaphor for the Chinese people and
to comment on the rapid social and economic changes
taking place in China. His performances and the resulting
photographs are radical, politically provocative and, at times,
masochistic. In his ongoing and explicit use of his body as a
vehicle for self-expression, Zhang tests society’s boundaries
of acceptability in artwork.
For this series of photographs Zhang – who has worked
extensively outside of China – returned to his native land,
to the city of Qufu in the Shandong Province. This province
has one of the largest populations in the country and some
of the poorest living conditions. The quickly developing
cities attract farmers and young labourers looking for work,
who often abandon their land and villages, leaving behind
the elderly, children and increasingly depleted farmland.
Zhang has said that on returning to China, he looked at
the sky and the earth and found them to be ‘indignant
and soulful’, so he created the performance in an attempt to
alter that state. He turned his body into something animal,
disguising it entirely – apart from his face – with large slabs
of raw meat that grotesquely exaggerate his shape. In the
images of him burrowing into the ground like an animal,
Zhang’s meat ‘suit’ creates a protective sheath around him,
but when he stands up, the blood red casing makes it seem
as if Zhang’s skin has been flayed.

Left above, left and opposite: Zhang Huan, Homeland, 2001.

64 BODY
 GAÜECA
In the series Me, Myself and I (2002–04), Spanish artist Gaüeca
mocks the hierarchies and clichés of art history and the
commercial art market. He assumes the roles of people
involved in the often elitist and snobbish art world, including
artists, curators, dealers and collectors. The photographs
serve as a comment on the subtle manners and behaviour
that can seem extraordinarily bewildering to those on the
outside of that environment. The project reveals the
insecurities that thrive in the unstable world of taste and
fashion, and which often dominate the business side of art,
commodifying the work and turning it into a cultural
product. When Gaüeca places text within some of the images,
it reads like the thought bubbles of narcissistic and
complacent characters who wish to reinvent themselves in
order to fit in; ‘Nobody Knows I Am Working Class’ one image
reveals, while another divulges ‘Nobody Knows My Dad Died
Yesterday’. In a complex layering of identity Gaüeca is
pretending to be a person who is in turn pretending to be
somebody else, and through this multitude of identities he
asks who places value upon artistic creation and why. In
terms of style and composition, the portraits are elegant and
meticulously crafted, and Gaüeca mimics the visual language
of advertising as well as famous works of art, from
seventeenth-century paintings by Dutch artist Jan Vermeer
to contemporary works by Bruce Nauman. He uses deadpan
humour to shatter the aura that surrounds the making and
selling of fine art, and manages to sidestep childish mockery
due to his intimate knowledge of the conventions and codes
of art history and the art world.

Opposite: Gaüeca, Nobody Knows Vermeer Told Me This, 2004.

Right: Gaüeca, Untitled, 2002.
Pages 132: Gaüeca, Nobody Knows My Dad Died Yesterday, 2002.
Page 133: Gaüeca, Untitled, 2003.

130 MASQUERADE GAÜECA 131

 GAÜECA
In the series Me, Myself and I (2002–04), Spanish artist Gaüeca
mocks the hierarchies and clichés of art history and the
commercial art market. He assumes the roles of people
involved in the often elitist and snobbish art world, including
artists, curators, dealers and collectors. The photographs
serve as a comment on the subtle manners and behaviour
that can seem extraordinarily bewildering to those on the
outside of that environment. The project reveals the
insecurities that thrive in the unstable world of taste and
fashion, and which often dominate the business side of art,
commodifying the work and turning it into a cultural
product. When Gaüeca places text within some of the images,
it reads like the thought bubbles of narcissistic and
complacent characters who wish to reinvent themselves in
order to fit in; ‘Nobody Knows I Am Working Class’ one image
reveals, while another divulges ‘Nobody Knows My Dad Died
Yesterday’. In a complex layering of identity Gaüeca is
pretending to be a person who is in turn pretending to be
somebody else, and through this multitude of identities he
asks who places value upon artistic creation and why. In
terms of style and composition, the portraits are elegant and
meticulously crafted, and Gaüeca mimics the visual language
of advertising as well as famous works of art, from
seventeenth-century paintings by Dutch artist Jan Vermeer
to contemporary works by Bruce Nauman. He uses deadpan
humour to shatter the aura that surrounds the making and
selling of fine art, and manages to sidestep childish mockery
due to his intimate knowledge of the conventions and codes
of art history and the art world.

Opposite: Gaüeca, Nobody Knows Vermeer Told Me This, 2004.

Right: Gaüeca, Untitled, 2002.
Pages 132: Gaüeca, Nobody Knows My Dad Died Yesterday, 2002.
Page 133: Gaüeca, Untitled, 2003.

130 MASQUERADE GAÜECA 131

 ANASAL-SHAIKH
Memory of Memories (2001) began as a site-specific
installation in a garage and balcony in the Gudaibiya
district of Bahrain’s capital city, Manama. This location was
important, as Al-Shaikh wanted the site to be relevant to his
investigation of memory, and this building reminded him
of the house in Saudi Arabia where he grew up. Some of the
photomontages from the project are composed of family
pictures juxtaposed with historical images or ephemera.
One group of photographs combines pictures of Al-Shaikh
as a child posing on a balcony with an image of the identity
card his father used when he was working on the Saudi
Arabian railway in the 1950s. During that period many
Bahrainis left to work in Saudi Arabia, which was creating a
modern urban infrastructure and was in need of manual
labourers. In another work, a photograph of Iraqi military
equipment destroyed in the Gulf War in Kuwait in the 1990s
is placed on top of a picture of Al-Shaikh as a boy with a
group of smiling children. A picture of the artist as a child
with grapes, an apple and a banana floating in the air in the
foreground, refers to a recurring dream he had in his
childhood, in which he looked up at a tree and saw that it
bore all three fruits. Each of these fruits appears
individually in other photographs, suggesting the fluid
boundaries between real memories and those that are
made up or re-remembered through exposure to family
albums. The diagram of geometric shapes that appears in
all of the images reflects components of Al-Shaikh’s
heritage, combining elements of Arabic and Islamic
cultures and beliefs. The large installation, from which
these pictures are taken, shifts from investigations of
personal identity to wider explorations of national identity
in the Middle East.

Opposite: Anas Al-Shaikh, Memory of Memories 1, 2001.

Above right: Anas Al-Shaikh, Memory of Memories 3, 2001.
Right: Anas Al-Shaikh, Memory of Memories 6, 2001.

148 STUDIO AND ALBUM AL-SHAIKH 149

 ANASAL-SHAIKH
Memory of Memories (2001) began as a site-specific
installation in a garage and balcony in the Gudaibiya
district of Bahrain’s capital city, Manama. This location was
important, as Al-Shaikh wanted the site to be relevant to his
investigation of memory, and this building reminded him
of the house in Saudi Arabia where he grew up. Some of the
photomontages from the project are composed of family
pictures juxtaposed with historical images or ephemera.
One group of photographs combines pictures of Al-Shaikh
as a child posing on a balcony with an image of the identity
card his father used when he was working on the Saudi
Arabian railway in the 1950s. During that period many
Bahrainis left to work in Saudi Arabia, which was creating a
modern urban infrastructure and was in need of manual
labourers. In another work, a photograph of Iraqi military
equipment destroyed in the Gulf War in Kuwait in the 1990s
is placed on top of a picture of Al-Shaikh as a boy with a
group of smiling children. A picture of the artist as a child
with grapes, an apple and a banana floating in the air in the
foreground, refers to a recurring dream he had in his
childhood, in which he looked up at a tree and saw that it
bore all three fruits. Each of these fruits appears
individually in other photographs, suggesting the fluid
boundaries between real memories and those that are
made up or re-remembered through exposure to family
albums. The diagram of geometric shapes that appears in
all of the images reflects components of Al-Shaikh’s
heritage, combining elements of Arabic and Islamic
cultures and beliefs. The large installation, from which
these pictures are taken, shifts from investigations of
personal identity to wider explorations of national identity
in the Middle East.

Opposite: Anas Al-Shaikh, Memory of Memories 1, 2001.

Above right: Anas Al-Shaikh, Memory of Memories 3, 2001.
Right: Anas Al-Shaikh, Memory of Memories 6, 2001.

148 STUDIO AND ALBUM AL-SHAIKH 149

 NANNASAARHELO
‘Choreographies emerge during the
night, with the movements of the two
sleepers sometimes seeming almost
synchronized. Yet they are present in
the world of dream, beyond the realm
of photography.’
To create the images in the series Sleep with Me (2007),
Saarhelo invited various people to sleep in her bed with
her for one night, and then photographed the experiences.
She produced a suite of seven or eight photographs of herself
with each ‘guest’, and titled each work with the name of the
second person. Saarhelo placed the camera above the bed
and programmed it to take a picture every half hour
throughout the night. As a result of having the photographs
taken automatically by a timing device, Saarhelo ceded some
control over the images, and was therefore often unsure
of whether the results would be aesthetically interesting.
Portraiture is commonly understood as a balance of power
between the sitter and the artist; by placing herself in the
frame, Saarhelo further relinquished her control. She placed
herself and her co-sleeper in a vulnerable position, in which
neither had any influence over how he or she looked when
sleeping. In describing this aspect of the work Saarhelo
has said, ‘Sleeping together is a situation of trust and
unconscious dialogue between friends or strangers.
Although the photos include individual people, it is difficult
to make any valid assumptions about their identities. The
quality of photographed human relations thus becomes
subjected to the viewer’s own associations and experiences.’
The limitations that Saarhelo imposed upon the project echo
the limitations of what photography can and cannot capture.
These portraits are carefully pared down so that the eye is
drawn to the flesh and the recurring appearance of the artist,
who has managed to create a composite self-portrait of
herself in the presence of changing bedfellows.

Opposite top: Nanna Saarhelo, Sleep with Me, Tuomo K (detail), 2007.
Opposite bottom: Nanna Saarhelo, Sleep with Me, Pihla (detail), 2007.

196 PERFORMANCE SAARHELO 197

 NANNASAARHELO
‘Choreographies emerge during the
night, with the movements of the two
sleepers sometimes seeming almost
synchronized. Yet they are present in
the world of dream, beyond the realm
of photography.’
To create the images in the series Sleep with Me (2007),
Saarhelo invited various people to sleep in her bed with
her for one night, and then photographed the experiences.
She produced a suite of seven or eight photographs of herself
with each ‘guest’, and titled each work with the name of the
second person. Saarhelo placed the camera above the bed
and programmed it to take a picture every half hour
throughout the night. As a result of having the photographs
taken automatically by a timing device, Saarhelo ceded some
control over the images, and was therefore often unsure
of whether the results would be aesthetically interesting.
Portraiture is commonly understood as a balance of power
between the sitter and the artist; by placing herself in the
frame, Saarhelo further relinquished her control. She placed
herself and her co-sleeper in a vulnerable position, in which
neither had any influence over how he or she looked when
sleeping. In describing this aspect of the work Saarhelo
has said, ‘Sleeping together is a situation of trust and
unconscious dialogue between friends or strangers.
Although the photos include individual people, it is difficult
to make any valid assumptions about their identities. The
quality of photographed human relations thus becomes
subjected to the viewer’s own associations and experiences.’
The limitations that Saarhelo imposed upon the project echo
the limitations of what photography can and cannot capture.
These portraits are carefully pared down so that the eye is
drawn to the flesh and the recurring appearance of the artist,
who has managed to create a composite self-portrait of
herself in the presence of changing bedfellows.

Opposite top: Nanna Saarhelo, Sleep with Me, Tuomo K (detail), 2007.
Opposite bottom: Nanna Saarhelo, Sleep with Me, Pihla (detail), 2007.

196 PERFORMANCE SAARHELO 197

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