The Serial Portrait: Photography and Identity in the Last One Hundred Years

October 2012 - Sarah Kennel, associate curator, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art, and Ksenya Gurshtein, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow, National Gallery of Art. To celebrate the opening of The Serial Portrait: Photography and Identity in the Last One Hundred Years at the National Gallery of Art on September 30, 2012, Sarah Kennel and Ksenya Gurshtein explored the role of seriality in 20th-century and contemporary photographic portraiture. On view through December 31, 2012, the exhibition features some 150 works by 20 photographers who transcend the limits of the single image by photographing the same subjects—"primarily friends, family, and themselves"—over the course of days, months, years, and even decades.