The History of the Photographic Self-Portrait - Part 1

Throughout the history of art, the self-portrait has had many functions, but there are two elements that have been constants throughout.  The first of these is the desire to demonstrate the skills of the artist and the second is about identity.  Originally, the self-portrait was about exhibiting the artist's skills and embodied the expression of talent and expertise rather than an expression of character.  It was to become synonymous with the need to identify the craftsman who made the image, mainly because when self-portraiture first emerged the social status of the artist was primarily as a craftsman.  However, as time progressed the social standing of the artist increased, becoming more than just a tool for their physical identification but a way of expressing their character and personality.   Even as far back as the Renaissance, of when the self-portrait started to appear with some regularity with Van Eyck in the Arnolfini portrait and Ghiberti in The gates of Paradise, both in the 15th century, these two aspects have always formed a basis for the self-portrait, originally out of a need for identification and then an expression of higher social status. 

As can be discerned, the self-portrait was always changing, being moulded by social and cultural influences or by new discoveries that created new techniques to be explored.  To help explore these changes, this series of blog posts follows a chronological path from the creation of photography through to modern day developments.  Consequently, the blog posts initially explore the new media, with a larger focus on technical innovations mainly through the 19th century.  Then, this gradually dissolves through the 20th century and a larger focus on the style of the self-portrait emerges.  When the 21st century is reached the technology has a more limited role in the timeline with much greater emphasis placed on the style of the self-portrait along with the exploration of identity. 

The reason for this can be easily explained.  When photography first emerged the main concentration was on the technology instead of the subject matter, and photography mainly inherited the style and composition from painting.  But when the 21st century exploded with the digital revolution, the self-portrait was already established as a photographic genre in its own right.  Consequently, the latter part of the series focuses more on the creativity of the photographer rather than the technology, even though the digital revolution had a fundamental effect on the self-portrait. 

However, with the self-portrait changing over the centuries a format is needed to monitor and explore the fluctuations in style and identity.  One possible way of tracking these changes and seeing how the self-portrait evolved is through monitoring three elements that are suggested by Cynthia Freeland in People and Portraits.  She suggests that there are “three key things needed for portraits: (1) a recognisable physical body along with (2) an inner life (i.e. some sort of character and / or psychological or mental states), and (3) the ability to pose or to present oneself to be depicted in a representation” (Freeland, 2010, p74) and they can be succinctly put as being the recognition, character or psychic state and posture aspects of portraiture.  Even though all three of these elements can be challenged, for instance how recognisable is a body, such as Picasso’s portrait of a weeping woman, but these three elements can be used to interpreted aspects of portraiture, as features that helps the portrait to communicate with the viewer. 

Nonetheless, these three aspects fall short of tracking identity, mainly because identity can cover multiple definitions.  It would be possible to place identity under recognition and / or character, which could give rise to the issues of identity being accidently overlooked instead of being explicitly discussed.  Also, as the definition of identity has changed drastically from the mid 19th century through to the 21st century, it deserves to be given more attention as it is such a central pillar to self-portraiture.  So, the four aspects of self-portraiture that will help to track its progress, changes and innovations are recognition, identity, character or psychic state and posture.

This can demonstrate that the self-portrait and photography had a very different relationship to the traditional arts.  The conventions of the self-portrait had already been well established, that it exhibits an identity of the artist, both physically and of their character and personality.  But photography was initially seen as a technology and not so much as a creative and expressive new media of art.  More emphasis was placed on how the photograph was created rather than the subject matter captured within that image. 

So, this series of blog posts aims to explore how photography evolved and how the self-portrait has changed over the years.  Initially the concentration is on the newly emerging technology of photography, which gradually stabilises and then the self-portrait blossoms into being a diverse and wonderous genre.