Samantha Box

While every image that we create contains an element of the self, only the self-portrait holds the photographer’s distinct personal perspective at its center. As we grapple with fluctuating times and shifting notions of identity, we will explore the ways in which the practice of self-portraiture can also shift. How can we challenge and expand the boundaries of this way of making work? The work of photographers who have used a variety of modes of self-portraiture will be presented for robust discussion, among them Tarrah Krajnak, Paul Sepuya, and Carrie Mae Weems. Through weekly exercises and supported by in-class critique, students will experiment with a variety of alternative approaches to the self-portrait—still-life, landscape, portraiture, and more conceptual and collaborative practices, such as text art—alongside traditional methods, with the aim of finding an individual approach to the expression of the self.

The shifting ways in which identity has been articulated, both historically and contemporaneously—such as around class, race, gender, queerness, religion, diaspora, or the intersection of those ideas—makes this conceptual space one that is ripe for examination, deconstruction, and reformation along one’s embodied understanding of self. In this course, we will examine the work of photographers from the 19th century to the present. who have used various strategies—from documentary image-making to portraiture and self-portraiture, still-life, and landscape—to place identity at the center of their practice. Key contextual readings will provide an understanding of the histories and politics surrounding these practices. Concomitantly, through assignments and supported by in-class critique, students will experiment with these modes of image-making—ultimately creating a body of work that articulates, through imagery, the personal vocabulary of their identity/identities.