Facing a Portrait

Speaking in Pairs
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-3-7774-4724-7
Verlag: Hirmer

Buch, Englisch, 176 Seiten, Format (B × H): 190 mm x 245 mm

Can a portrait represent violence and healing at the

same time? By juxtaposing iconic images created at

points of conflict and growth in history, Speaking in

Pairs examines how conflicting forces can be

experienced in what initially appears to be a quiet

photograph and how such evidence of being present,

alive, can increase visibility or hasten our demise.

Portraits allow immortality. But who gets to be

pictured and seen? Who may tell their story?

Speaking in Pairs seeks to offer navigational refer
ences across time and geography, between works

and the practitioners making, or pondering, them.

It considers art’s historical and contemporary

response to oppression and crisis and offers rep
resentation to those impacted by extraordinary

events. It unravels the dynamics between sitters,

artists and viewers and how they complicate the

image in ways that are not immediately discernible

Autoren/Hrsg.

Leist, Reiner

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstformen, Kunsthandwerk Malerei: Gemälde
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Fotografie

Über Autor(innen)

Leist, Reiner
Reiner Leist is the author of South Africa: Blue Portraits (Nazraeli Press), American Portraits (Prestel), Window: Eleven Septembers (Prestel) and South Africa: Another Country (Jacana). Leist taught in the Visual Arts Program at M.I.T. Cambridge MA and is currently a Professor and Photography Area Head at Hunter College, The City University of New York.