Malleable Likeness and the Photographic Portrait

May 19 – August 30, 2009

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Although portraits have been produced for centuries in a variety of media, photography has played a pivotal role in the genre's history. To a large extent, the photographic portrait's popularity stemmed from the medium's capacity to quickly and inexpensively reproduce a sitter's appearance with an unprecedented degree of mimetic detail. At the same time, photographers have consistently complicated the notion that a photographic portrait faithfully reproduces a sitter's physiognomy.

This exhibition—which includes works by Julia Margaret Cameron, August Sander, Berenice Abbott, and Vik Muniz, among others—considers the malleable role of likeness in portrait photography from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The exhibition features photographs generously loaned to the Smart Museum from the collection of Lester and Betty Guttman.

Curator: Michael Tymkiw, PhD candidate in art history at the University of Chicago, in consultation with Jessica Moss, Smart Museum Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, and Stephanie Smith, Smart Museum Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of Contemporary Art.

Top: Installation view of Malleable Likeness and the Photographic Portrait. Photo by Tom Van Eynde.

Presented in the Joel and Carole Bernstein Gallery for Works on Paper.

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