There are many names I've come across before, and equally many which are new to me. Curiously there are also several practitioners I'm familiar with, but not for their self-portraiture work. This point alone speaks of the draw towards turning the camera on oneself that many photographers experience, even if that's not work that they spread widely nor produce often, it still seems to be a thing of intrigue for many artists.
One such photographer whose self-portrait work I found in the book which suited my research admirably, was Boris Mikhailov. Susan Bright's comment says it as well as I ever could:
“A wry sense of humour is often apparent throughout Mikhailov’s work, and tends to be the tie that binds his self portraits together. His comedic sensibilities can be seen in the series I am Not I, in particular his ridiculous posturing with a dildo. He pokes fun at his masculine body-builder pose – which aims to show the body to its best potential – by being unafraid to laugh at himself and mock the potency of the phallus with its plastic counterpart. The more recent photographs of Mikhailov playing football in the park rely upon a similar goofiness and slapstick humour, which turn what could be banal pictures into an almost tragicomic meditation on age and agility. They are evidence that he does not take himself too seriously.”
Boris Mikhailov - I am Not I
Boris Mikhailov - Football
Bright's writing is concise, interesting, and accessible. In the introduction she mentions several times the continuing efforts exercised by photographers and artists to discover something of an objective or pure self through self-portraiture. Claude Cahun's quote sums up the challenge of it succinctly: “Under the mask is another mask, I will never finish lifting all these faces.” I can see this and the further points Bright raises in this part of her book, assisting me in providing a context from which my current photographic practice will emerge from.
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