Technologies of the Self-Portrait: Identity, Presence and the Construction of the Subject(s) in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Art

by Gabriella Giannachi

This book demonstrates how artists have radically revisited the genre of the self-portrait by using a range of technologies and media that mark different phases in what can be described as a history of self- or selves-production.

Gabriella Giannachi shows how artists constructed their presence, subjectivity, and personhood, by using a range of technologies and media including mirrors, photography, sculpture, video, virtual reality and social media, to produce an increasingly fluid, multiple, and social representation of their ‘self’.

This interdisciplinary book draws from art history, performance studies, visual culture, new media theory, philosophy, computer science, and neuroscience to offer a radical new reading of the genre.

163 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 29, 2022

About the author

Gabriella Giannachi is Professor of Performance and New Media and Director of the Centre for Intermedia at the University of Exeter. She is the coauthor (with Steve Benford) of Performing Mixed Reality (MIT Press).