The Theatre of the Face
The new issue of Bookforum is on the stands and has mailed to all subscribers. I’m happy to have a full page review of the new Max Kozloff book, The Theatre of the Face published in this issue. What follows below is a teaser for the full review. Click HERE to read the entire piece.
Feb/Mar 2008
FACE BOOK
Max Kozloff charts the history of the photographic portrait
What could be hoped for, and what lost, when the discoveries of physics and the applications of engineering worked to change culture, politics, the economy, communications, social life and perception itself? This is not the place to enlarge on such general historical debates. I am only interested in the tone they sometimes gave to the photographic depiction of the human face.
—Max Kozloff
The first elementary school portrait day that I can recall is from the second grade. I awoke knowing exactly what I would wear. It had to be my jungle-print, polyester-blend, long-sleeved T-shirt, the one with a collage of photographic imagery that included jaguars poking their heads out from the thick green underbrush. Nothing else would convey properly who I was to posterity.
Annually, when the packet of prints arrived, I met the likeness of myself with mild disappointment, which was quickly sloughed off in the hustle-bustle of trading wallet-size pictures with friends. There was one girl, on whom I had a nine-year crush that began in kindergarten, whose tiny school portrait occupied a treasured, hidden spot in my bedroom. The photograph was my talisman of her, my stand-in for the real thing.
The “real thing,” the person portrayed in a photograph, is always a bodily thing. And according to sacred traditions, the body is itself a talisman for an inner, abstract reality—the body acts as temple of the spirit, the face as mirror of the soul. These are both common phrases that we take for granted but whose deeper implications are only just below the surface.
… [to continue reading, click here.]