The Experimental Self

I have an old camera with which I have taken countless photographs of myself. It often produces astonishing effects, Edvard Munch states in a 1930 interview. Someday when I am old and have nothing better to do than work on an autobiography, all my photographic self-portraits will see the light of day again. The autobiography was never realised, but the self-portraits have found their way to the pages of The Experimental Self. The Photography of Edvard Munch, which demonstrates the fundamentally experimental nature of the artist’s photographic practice.

As a photographer, Munch embraced the freedom provided by the amateur position, and the unpredictable aspects of analogue photographic technology. By playfully approaching his own image in picture after picture, Munch extends his explorations of selfhood in other media through photography. The resulting photographs provide unique access to Munch’s radical artistic vision, which this book studies through eminent essays by Patricia G. Berman, Tom Gunning and MaryClaire Pappas.