The Visual Autobiography: Life narrative depicted through self-reflective images

The Visual Autobiography researches the way visual artists create their autobiography through self-portraiture. The study of self-portrait begins from the handprints in the Chauvet caves in France to detailed realistic, abstract and symbolic images created by artists through the 15th to 21st centuries, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, and Chuck Close. Photography had affected how artist viewed themselves and their work; through its technological developments it has allowed many to express how they view themselves and their lives beyond the means of painting, printing and sculpting. Self-portraiture is very much still alive today and no longer just a luxury of the wealthy - this is most evident in many social media sites where profile pictures are updated and carefully selected by their users. The timing, selection, and depiction of each portrait we put out into the world are the elements that create the autobiographies - they show a passing of time, development, emotions and thoughts just as a written autobiography does through the written word.

Author

• Devereux, Marjorie Lynn

Language

• en

Keyword

• self-portraiture
• autobiography
• self-reflection
• narrative
• autobiographical works
• self-identity

Date created

• 2013

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Art and the Book

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Deal, Georgia
• McAleer-Keeler, Kerry

Committee Member(s)

• McAleer-Keeler, Kerry
• Hurtt, Sarah
• Smith, Casey
• Deal, Georgia

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/37720c92k