Reconfiguring the Portrait
By (Author) Abraham Geil
Edited by Tom Jirsa
Edinburgh University Press
Edinburgh University Press
10th November 2025
United Kingdom
Non Fiction
Portraits and self-portraiture in art
Theory of art
Philosophy: aesthetics
Paperback
312
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
This collection of essays explores the stakes of that seemingly anachronistic comeback. It reframes portraiture as a set of cultural techniques for the dynamic performance of subjects entangled in specific medial configurations. Tracking the portrait across a wide range of media literature, drawings, paintings, grave stelae, films, gallery installations, contemporary music videos, deep fakes, social media, video games and immersive VR interfaces the contributors interrogate and transform persistent metaphysical and anthropocentric assumptions inherited from traditional notions of portraiture.
As technological practices of the portrait have proliferated across the media ecosystem in recent years, this canonical genre of identity and representation has provoked a new wave of scholarly attention and artistic experimentation.