In naked repose

This paper examines the role of the face as it is caught suspended in private contemplation in candid photography. It starts with a celebrated lineage of photography of anonymous faces that promise the revelation of a secret, absorbed self: Paul Strand's 1916 portrait of a blind street peddler, made with a special right-angled lens; Walker Evans's New York subway portraits (1938-41), shot clandestinely from under his coat; Luc Delahaye's L'Autre (1995-97), "stolen" from the Paris Metro in the 1990s; and Philip-Lorca diCorcia's Heads (2001), gigantic strobe-lit portraits on the streets of New York. The paper then turns to Australian photographer Cherine Fahd, whose work insistently alludes to the redemptive potential of this promise. This potential is interpreted in terms of Emmanuel Levinas's ethical responsibility to the other, Ariella Azoulay's civil contract of photography and Giorgio Agamben's eschatological understanding of photographic testimony.