3 research outputs found
Digital realities & virtual ideals: Portraiture, idealism and the clash of subjectivities in the post-digital era
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Taylor and Francis in Photography and Culture on 26/02/2019, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/17514517.2019.1565290
The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.All portraits play host to a number of antithetical tensions, such as ‘private’ and ‘public’, ‘real’
and ‘ideal’, without which they would be reduced to a type of unassuming identification of
subjects. Whereas in premodern times the artist was subject to the demands of the
commissioner, after modernism the representational desires of the sitter began to clash with
the creative intentions of the artist. Prior to the introduction of digital formats, this clash of
subjectivities manifests itself in photography during the production of the work, the shooting
of a portrait. Digital photography and post-production editing have expanded the methods
for idealising external appearance; a desire stimulated by the recent technological acceleration
of production and circulation of more ‘manipulated’ portraits than ever.
In what ways, therefore, does the introduction of digital post-production editing and
composite images affect this double-clash in portraiture, between the real and ideal, and the
desires of the sitter against the intentions of the artist? Moreover, how does the evolution of
self-portraiture in the ‘selfie’ affect the epistemological character of the genre? As such, is
conceptual and aesthetic subservience a matter of technological possibility or creative
determination