Wu Hung

This talk studies photographs that subtly disrupt the classification of portraits and self-portraits. These are studio portraits that bear the sitters’ inscriptions. Using a group of images related to the “queue-cutting” movement in early 20th-century China as examples, Wu Hung suggests that when an inscription is imbued with a distinct “I” voice and expresses the sitter’s personal feeling, experience, and aspiration, it transforms the anonymous portrait into a “self-image.”