Alfredo Jaar

Self Portrait, 1977

This work comprises nine self-portraits taken by Alfredo Jaar during his first visit to the United States in 1977. Created using a computer on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, the images were generated digitally, offering a strikingly early exploration of technology and identity. Each portrait captures Jaar cycling through a range of intense emotional states – from anguish, with his eyes cast downward and head in his hands, to fear, despair, and finally a form of manic euphoria as he throws his head back in exaggerated laughter. The sequence reflects Jaar’s psychological state at the time, shaped by the trauma of witnessing Augusto Pinochet’s US-backed coup in Chile just a few years earlier. The work forms part of a broader body of early projects that confront the personal and political consequences of dictatorship, and marks a formative moment in Jaar’s engagement with image-making as a mode of resistance and self-examination.