William A. Ewing is Director of the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne. His previous publications include the best-selling The Body.

The first full-scale study of the face in contemporary photography: a challenge to accepted notions of what constitutes a portrait.

In this groundbreaking publication, William A. Ewing announces the death of the conventional portrait. In an age when we are bombarded with flawless images of youthful beauty, when rejuvenation is available through a jar of cream or a scalpel, artists and photographers seek to portray the face in new ways.

Through a variety of techniques, including computer manipulation, photomontage, and retouching, the artists present their new portraits. They replace clarity with blur, the split-second with the elastic moment, reality with hyperreality, questioning the notion of a fixed identity, of universality of expression, of what constitutes beauty.

Whether Cindy Sherman's disquieting disguises, Gillian Wearing's masked self-portrait, LawickMü ller's composite portraits of couples, Thomas Ruff's studiously neutral facade, or Orlan's disturbing experiments with cosmetic surgery, these faces demand attention. Other artists represented in the book include Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Martin Parr, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Rineke Dijkstra, Lee Friedlander, Barbara Kruger, and Tibor Kalman. 250+ photographs in color and duotone.