In 1975 I began working on a film that looked at the body and face in close-up. I used a still camera to storyboard and soon realized that the sequences did not need to be made into a film. When exhibited they comprised as few as one image and as many as sixteen. Unlike cinematic linear progression these sequences could be read from left to right or the reverse or episodically. It was factual as well as metaphorical, and also dealt with a private exchange between my subject and myself, that could then be made public. These remain essential aspects of my work.
For this book I maintained the original size of the prints, restricting me to one per page. As a consequence the sequences often had to be reconfigured and this has breathed new life into the work itself.
I am indebted to Paul McMahon for giving me my first solo show which included these sequences at Artist Space, NYC in 1977; and Deborah Martin Kao who curated them into her survey exhibition of my work, Portraits, in 2004 at the Sackler Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
Gary Schneider