Face Value: Approaches to Portraiture

Since the earliest days of its invention, photography has sought to depict, categorize, enhance, romanticize, expose, elevate, and explore identity through the form of the portrait. The medium's innate capabilities have allowed it to be used for a multitude of purposes ranging from the artistic to the administrative, the sublime to the mundane. Photographic artist and photography collector, Nigel Maister (Artistic Director of the UR International Theater Program) talks about his groundbreaking three-part exhibition of photographic portraits drawn from his collection, Part I and II are currently on view at the UR River Campus's Hartnett Gallery (January 21-February 22, 2025) and at Frontispace Gallery (UR's Rush Rhees Art & Music Library; January 21 to February 16th, 2025).  The show, entitled Face Value: Approaches to Portraiture, explores some of the many ways portraiture has developed and redefined itself over its 180 year history, and argues for an expansive view of, and approach to the genre that incorporates on an equal level both the functional (or vernacular) and the self-consciously artistic.