Fiona Johnstone is an art historian, researcher and lecturer, specialising in the modern and contemporary period, with a focus on the intersections between art and visual culture and the medical humanities. She is Associate Lecturer in Cultural & Contextual Studies (Photography) at Middlesex University, UK. She has also worked at Durham University, the University of Warwick, Imperial College London, University of the West of England, University of the Arts London and Birkbeck, University of London, UK.Kirstie Imber is Sessional Lecturer in the History of Art & Screen Media at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, where she was previously Associate Research Fellow. Her research interests include the censorship of art, the intersection of law and cultural practices in the UK, and contemporary Iranian art.

• List of ImagesNotes on the ContributorsAcknowledgements1. Introducing the anti-portraitFiona Johnstone and Kirstie Imber2. Decapitations: the portrait, the anti-portrait ... and what comes after?of portraitureMichael Newman3. An Anti-Portraitist in the Realm of Letters: Gertrude Stein's Theory of SeeingEry Shin4. ‘A whole man, made of all men’: Giacometti, Existentialism, and the ‘Singular Universal’Véronique Wiesinger5. ‘Closeness, or the Appearance of Closeness’: Robert Morris’s Critical Self-Portraits and the Expanding Artworld of 1960s AmericaDavid Hodge6. Subjects Unknown: Found Images and the Depersonalization of PortraitureElla Mudie7. Subject/Object: seeking the self in Susan Aldworth’s portraits of schizophreniaJulia Beaumont-Jonesvii8.Hiding in Plain Sight: Gazing at Laura Swanson’s Anti-Self-PortraitsKristen Lindgren9. Filling the Narrative Void: Material Portraits in the Chilean Post-DictatorshipMegan Corbin10. Relics, Remains and Other Objects: Non-Mimetic Portraiture in the Age of AIDSFiona JohnstoneIndex

This book considers conceptual portraits, which are experimental and emphasize symbolic meanings rather than physical appearances. Some of the art in this book is conventional painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography, but most of it is innovative.