San José Museum of Art

See what you think.

Post-Portrait

  • A photograph of a bare shouldered female with head wrapped in toilet tissue and paper rolls used as rollers. The woman's face is solemn with pink lips and long eyelashes. She is set against a dark background.

    Henrik Kerstens 
    Paper Roll, 2008
    Chromogenic print
    20 × 32 inches
    Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum Purchase with funds provided by PhotoFuture

  • Three consecutive images of the same bearded man. In the first he is wearing a suede jacket, facing the right with hands gripping the front of the jacket. In the second he is holding the jacket facing forward. In the third he is wearing the jacket facing left.

    Elizabeth Heyert
    Mark, from the series “The Narcissists,” 2009
    Chromogenic color print
    Triptych 35 ½ × 47 ½ inches
    Courtesy the artist

  • A print with two photographs of the same man with different hand poses. He has similar expressions of shock in both photograph, with the only difference being the placement of his right hand and the white collar in the right picture.

    Richard Avedon
    Francis Bacon Diptych, 1979
    14 × 22 inches
    Gelatin silver print on paper
    Gift of Arthur J. Goodwin

  • In a blurred bedroom are 2 people with solemn expressions and are slightly holding onto each other. The person on the left wears a white-collard shirt with a bowtie, glasses, a watch, and has slightly sliver hair. The other person wears a striped shirt.

    Catherine Opie
    Melissa & Lake, Durham, North Carolina, 1998
    40 × 50 inches
    Chromogenic print on paper
    Gift of the Lipman Family Foundation

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    This group exhibition of contemporary portraiture explores the aesthetic, psychological, and emotional implications of the gaze in photography today. Here, the traditional view of a portrait is subverted: instead, a dynamic and ambiguous relationship between object and subject develops. The power of the gaze is blurred the moment the sitter becomes a partner in the art-making process. Included in the exhibition are works by Nicholas Albrecht, Caitlin Atkinson Richard Avedon, Charles Berger, Jim Campbell, Kelli Connell, Gohar Dashti, Beth Yarnelle Edwards, Katy Grannan, Elizabeth Heyert, r.r. jones, Henrik Kerstens, Miguel Angelo Libarnes, Lesley Louden, Jana Marcus, Shirin Neshat, Catherine Opie, Aline Smithson, and Larry Sultan.  

    Presented as a counterpoint to Robert Henri’s California Portraits, the exhibition is a critical look at the creative—and ever expansive—practice of portraiture some 100 years after Henri.