Portrait-making receives a revisionist survey uniting artists of all ages, identities, and nationalities. This prodigious survey, spanning from the early 19th century to the present day, brings together over 50 artists from around the world and argues that the portrait is an enduringly democratic, humanistic genre. Moving beyond binary thinking, the exhibition emphasizes the diversity of subjects and complexities of character that artists have captured through various modes of portrait-making. Looking backwards and forwards, Pictures Girls Make recontextualizes pioneering portraitists who escaped the narrow first draft of the past century while also surveying a wide range of contemporary painters. Far from “just girls,” this range of artists has pushed the genre to capture the actual conditions, social structures, and day-to-day experiences that form human existence. 

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Pictures Girls Make: Portraitures, curated by Alison M. Gingeras, at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles in 2023.

Edited by Alison M. Gingeras.

Hardcover, 384 pages
Los Angeles: BLUM Books, 2024
ISBN: 9780998736082
7 x 9 inches