Modalities of Portraiture

The art of portrait

Clegg & Guttmann is an artist duo, composed of Michael Clegg (*1957, Dublin) and Martin Guttmann (*1957, Jerusalem). Since the early 1980s their photographs have been based on questions of portraiture, the representation of power, and the codification of gestures. Famous for their images representing powerful people or families inspired both by 17th-century Dutch painting and commissioned portraits for annual reports, they developed different typologies of photographs through the 1980s and 1990s.

Two of these typologies are the subject of this large-format monograph: “Portraits and Artworks” and “Collaborative Portraits.” If the first category reunites portraits of men and women around artworks, the second one gathers together collaborations between Clegg & Guttmann and other artists. This volume is the first illustrated book dedicated entirely to their photographs. It is accompanied by a text by Clegg & Guttmann, as well as by an introduction by Tobia Bezzola.

Published with Codax Publishers, Zurich.