Faces of Photography

Faces of Photography turns the camera on photographers themselves, pairing Tina Ruisinger's portraits of major 20th-century figures in the medium with interviews in which they reflect on their own work and on photography at large.

Published by Edition Stemmle in 1996, the 176-page hardcover assembles a group portrait of the field at the end of the century. It treats photographers as subjects worthy of the same attentive, personal photography they themselves practiced, rather than as anonymous authorities behind a lens. The book carries text by photographer Ted Croner and an introduction by critic and historian A. D. Coleman, framing Ruisinger's portraits within a broader critical account of photographic practice and its practitioners.

Ruisinger is a Swiss photographer known for portrait and documentary work. Faces of Photography remains her best-known book project, an unusual double exercise in portraiture and oral history that captures its subjects' own voices alongside their images.