Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell takes as its premise the idea that
the outer person is a reflection of the inner. Tracing the modern photographic
portrait over the past 150 years, the book reveals the many ways the photographic
arts have investigated, represented, interpreted, and subverted the human face and,
consequently, the human spirit. Artists have used the genre not only to convey
familiar emotions such as fear, love, sadness, and anger, but also to explore
complex subjective states such as passionate individuality and psychological
withdrawal. Different avant-garde movements have enlisted farce, masks, and
masquerade in their charting of the human character, and many postmodern works
employ irony and ambiguity to deal with issues of identity, gender, and
dissociation.

The book, which accompanies an exhibition opening at
the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in October 1999, is organized roughly
chronologically around the traditional, modernist, and postmodernist views of the
face, although the primary approach of one period often appears in the others. The
artists discussed include, among others, Diane Arbus, Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward
Curtis, Salvador Dali, Duchenne de Boulogne, Dorothea Lange, Annie Leibowitz, Bruce
Nauman, Orlan, William Parker, Irving Penn, Lucas Samaras, Cindy Sherman, Andy
Warhol, and Edward Weston.

Published in cooperation with the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art.