From the daguerreotype to the digital age, Face Time is an accessible introduction to one of photography’s
most popular subjects: ourselves. With over 250 illustrations, it presents rarely seen treasures alongside
works by the greatest names in photography, including nineteenth-century pioneers Hippolyte Bayard and
Julia Margaret Cameron, twentieth-century masters Edward Weston, Lee Miller and Richard Avedon, and
contemporary groundbreakers Newsha Tavakolian, Rineke Dijkstra and Zanele Muholi.
It also immortalizes some of photography’s most iconic subjects, such as Queen Elizabeth II, Barack
Obama, Marilyn Monroe, Frida Kahlo, Truman Capote and many others. Transcending time and space, the
book adopts a fresh, thematic approach to the history of photographic portraiture in eight chapters, tracing a
wide range of applications and influences across the spheres of art, advertising, anthropology, fashion,
narrative, documentary and vernacular photography. Informative and insightful introductions to each theme
are followed by unexpected and thought-provoking curations of photographs, as well as detailed
commentaries on key images.
The result is an ambitiously curated and visually entertaining introduction to the history and themes of
photographic portraiture, and an inspiring journey through the ever-elusive question of human identity.