Lara Perry, The substance of the subject: representing identity in contemporary portraiture Many of the starkest examples of 'performed' gender in contemporary art have been delivered through the genre of portraiture: the works of Cindy Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura can certainly be understood to work in this context. The interest of contemporary artists in exposing the machinery of gender performance and impersonation in portraits has contributed to a more general confrontation with what has been described as 'the promise of portraiture' to represent the 'authentic' subject. In this paper, Lara Perry investigates recent experimentations in the genre of the portrait, and explores how new modes of portrayal – for example, those using time-based media – respond to new models for thinking about subjectivity.Further ReadingGen Doy, Picturing the Self: Changing views of the subject in visual culture, I.B. Tauris 2005William Ewing, Face: the new photographic portrait, Thames and Hudson 2006Shearer West, Portraiture, Oxford University Press 2004www.unknownsitter.com