This “paired volume”, beautifully designed by Elliott Bryce Foulkes, features Cherine Fahd’s photographic studies, ‘Shadowing Portraits’ (2014-2016) and ‘You Look Like a…’ (2016-2017). It includes a critical essay by Blair French – Director Curatorial and Digital, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, contributions from the ‘Shadowing’ participants, as well as Fahd’s own notations on the processes of making portraits.
A ‘Portrait is a Puzzle’ is in itself an artwork; a pairing of two photographic series that invites the reader to turn the book over and around, to reach two endings in the middle and to interrogate the function of a portrait and the people it depicts, as an infinite and unsolvable puzzle.
Cherine Fahd is an artist, academic and writer working in the field of photography. Fahd has exhibited extensively in major public institutions in Australia and internationally. Her work is represented in public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria, Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego and the Haifa Museum of Art, Israel. In 2018 she was awarded the Asialink Creative Exchange residency to Varanasi, India and in 2019 she was selected for The National: New Australian Art and awarded a residency at The Clothing Store, both at Carriageworks. Fahd’s first book with M.33, A Portrait is a Puzzlewas published in 2017.
