New York 1987

Rosalind Solomon captured this photograph in New York, preserving a moment replete with portraits and likenesses. Note the array of images—paintings, sculptures, perhaps even photographs—each bearing the visage of a single figure. The concentration of these images evokes the ancient Roman custom of creating imagines maiorum, ancestral masks displayed to honor lineage and instill civic virtue. Yet, here, the proliferation of one man's image takes on a distinctly modern inflection. The self, multiplied and scrutinized, echoes the psychoanalytic concept of the fragmented ego, simultaneously seeking and eluding definition. Consider the act of portraiture itself, how it captures not just physical likeness, but the sitter's persona. Does the consistent rendering of this one man reveal an attempt to immortalize, understand, or perhaps even control the self? The psychological weight of such repetition creates an intense, almost unsettling atmosphere, engaging our deepest subconscious notions about identity and mortality. This cyclical progression of self-representation resurfaces, evolves, and takes on new meanings in our contemporary obsession with images.