Portrait Partials
Carolee Schneemann
American, 1939–2019
1970
Thirty-five gelatin silver prints set in a square grid of extreme close-ups that fragment faces into eyes, noses, lips and skin, asking the viewer to assemble intimacy from small bodily parts.
What strikes you is the mosaic effect—tiny, intensely focused rectangles of flesh, some sharp, some blurred, that read both as anonymous textures and as uncanny, partial portraits.
Created in 1970, the work upends traditional portraiture by treating identity as a constructed, bodily montage and helped open feminist and body-centered approaches in photography and conceptual art.
Medium
Thirty-five gelatin silver prints
Dimensions
26 7/8 × 26 3/4" (68.3 × 67.9 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Acquired through the generosity of the Peter Norton Family Foundation
Accession
200.1994
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
