The Characteristics of the Post-Modern Self-portrait Photography

포스트모던 사진 자화상

This paper examines the characteristics of post-modern self-portrait photography. Characteristics of postmodernism associated with the "loss of centeredness," such as the death of the author, interdisciplinarity, and intertextuality, brought about a number of changes within the self-portrait. The distinction between post-modern and modern self-portraiture can be characterized by the following qualities: appropriation, the use of photography, and the utilization of the human body as an art. The characteristics of post-modern self-portrait photography can be represented through the works of Cindy Sherman, Orlan, and Morimura Yasumasa. By presenting prototypical women in her works, Cindy Sherman not only represents images of those women, but also exposes her fictitious role in the work. She creates a distance between herself in the works and herself in reality and discloses a paternalistic gaze. Meanwhile, Orlan transforms her face into a distorted image and presents it as an alternative identity that is representative of postmodernism. She corrodes the standard concept of identity through plastic surgery and treats the face not as a place where the identity stays, but as a simple body part or fragment of skin. Orlan's post-human face is malleable according to the artist's desire to raise the issue of what the human face is, and opposes the structure of modernism. Morimura Yasumasa also appropriates images from masterpieces and presents a hybrid identity between Eastern and Western, male and female, original and replica, and subject and object. In order to dissect social prejudice, he puts forth every single structural dichotomy that coexists in his self-portrait and suppresses a strong ego. He also studies the relationship between 'seeing' and being 'seen' by trading the painter's role from that of the subject to that of the object.