Why We Stare: The Psychological Impact of Portraits and Self-Representation
Portraits have always had a strange power over us. Whether it’s a meticulously painted Renaissance masterpiece, a candid photograph capturing someone mid-thought, or even a perfectly curated Instagram selfie, portraits make us pause. We stare, analyse, and sometimes feel an unsettling sense of recognition — even when we don’t know the subject personally. But why? What is it about seeing a face, frozen in time, that holds our attention hostage?
This fascination isn’t new. Humans have been obsessed with self-representation for centuries, from the grandiose oil paintings of monarchs to the warped, existential self-portraits of modern artists. But in an age where everyone has a camera in their pocket and the ability to edit themselves into a version they prefer, the way we engage with portraits has evolved. Are we still searching for truth in a face, or are we just looking for the best version of ourselves?
Untitled Film Still #21 (1978) by Cindy Sherman. Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York; © Cindy Sherman
The Gaze That Holds Us: The Magnetic Pull of Faces
A face staring back at us triggers something primal. Psychological studies suggest that humans are hardwired to focus on faces — it’s how we learn to recognise emotions, assess social cues, and even determine threats. Babies, within minutes of being born, instinctively look for faces. Our brains process them faster than almost any other visual stimulus.
But portraits go beyond this instinctual recognition. Unlike a passing glance at a stranger on the street, a portrait demands time. It asks us to linger, to decipher expression, to wonder about the subject’s life, thoughts, and emotions. The longer we look, the deeper we fall into its spell.
I remember standing in front of Lucian Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping at the Tate Britain, transfixed. The sheer rawness of the painting, the fleshiness, the weight of the body sinking into the couch — made it impossible to look away. It wasn’t just a portrait; it was an unfiltered confrontation with reality. The way Freud paints skin, with all its imperfections, felt like the antithesis of everything we see in glossy media. There was no attempt to beautify, just a brutal honesty that somehow felt more intimate than any photograph. It made me think about the way we present ourselves: how much of self-representation is about honesty, and how much is about performance?
The Art of Self-Representation: From Oil Paint to Filters
While self-portraits have long been tools of self-expression, they also reveal deeper questions about who gets to be represented and how. For centuries, portraiture was a privilege of the powerful. Kings, queens, and aristocrats commissioned artists to immortalise them — not necessarily as they were, but as they wished to be seen. A monarch’s portrait wasn’t just an image; it was propaganda and a status symbol. Kings and queens were painted to appear more regal, scholars more intelligent, and socialites more graceful. Walk through any museum, and the faces staring back at you aren’t the most interesting people in history, just the wealthiest.
Fast forward a few centuries, and we’re doing the same thing — except now, we don’t need an artist. We have front-facing cameras, filters, and apps that let us sculpt our faces into optimised versions of ourselves.
Living in Chelsea, I see this performance of self-representation everywhere. In cafés, people subtly adjust their posture for selfies, smoothing their hair before tapping the shutter. Instagram is the modern-day equivalent of a painted portrait—except now, the artist and the subject are the same person. We tweak, refine, and sometimes distort, until the image staring back isn’t quite real, but something better.
And yet, despite all this control, we’re still obsessed with authenticity. The paradox of modern self-representation is that we curate relentlessly while craving images that feel real. The rise of unfiltered selfies, blurry film photos, and the hashtag #nofilter hints at a collective exhaustion with perfection. But even these “raw” moments are carefully staged. So when we stare at a portrait — be it a Rembrandt, a Richard Avedon photograph, or a Snapchat selfie, what are we really looking for?
Hans Holbein the Younger: The Ambassadors
The Uncanny Effect: When Portraits Stare Back
There’s something unnerving about a portrait that meets your gaze. Unlike a candid snapshot, a direct stare challenges us. It’s where portraiture tips into the uncanny.
Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors is a masterclass in this. The two men, elaborately dressed, stand in confident poses, but the longer you look, the more you notice—the slightly wary expressions, the infamous distorted skull lurking at the bottom. It’s not just a portrait; it’s a game, a hidden puzzle for the viewer to solve.
Frida Kahlo and Cindy Sherman push this further, using self-portraits to interrogate identity, gender, and class. But even today, self-representation remains uneven. Social media, despite democratising portraits, still favours those who fit into an algorithmic aesthetic. Visibility is tied to engagement, and the “perfect" self-portrait often conforms to narrow beauty standards. In this way, portraiture as a tool of power remains alive, even if it has swapped oil paint for Instagram filters.
Sherman, in particular, plays with this power dynamic. Her self-portraits transform her into personas — housewives, socialites, victims — not to promote herself, but to question identity itself. Who are we, really, when we strip away the costumes?
I once experienced this unsettling effect firsthand at the National Portrait Gallery. A simple black-and-white photograph of a man seemed to follow me as I moved. His expression hovered between sadness and defiance. I had no idea who he was, but for a brief moment, I felt like I knew him. That’s the power of a portrait: it collapses time and identity into a single moment of recognition.
Deepfakes and the End of Identity?
There’s something unsettling about certain portraits — not necessarily because of grotesque details, but because they make us question the nature of identity itself. The Holbein portrait of Henry VIII feels uncanny in its theatricality, as if the king is glaring from another dimension, still commanding power centuries later. Cindy Sherman’s grotesque transformations force the viewer to confront the absurdity of self-image.
Now, we’ve entered a new phase of portraiture: AI-generated faces and deepfakes. If self-representation has always been about performance, what happens when the performer doesn’t exist?
Deepfake technology can fabricate entire identities, creating eerily realistic faces of people who never lived or manipulating existing faces to say and do things they never did. The digital portrait, once a means of capturing identity, now holds the power to erase it entirely.
Deepfake technology blurs the line between reality and illusion, producing images of people who never existed or manipulating existing faces to say and do things they never did. The digital portrait, once a means of capturing and preserving identity, now holds the power to fabricate it entirely. AI-generated self-portraits raise a disturbing question: if a portrait no longer represents an actual person but merely the idea of one, does it still hold the same psychological weight? Or have we, in our endless quest for self-representation, reached the point where identity itself is just another algorithmic output?
The Self-Portrait as Identity Crisis
Self-portraits are where art and psychology collide most intensely. Painting oneself, photographing, or sketching — isn’t just an exercise in representation; it’s an interrogation of self. Who am I? What do I see? And, perhaps most importantly, how do others see me?
Artists have used self-portraits to wrestle with their identities for centuries. Self-portraits have always been a battleground between self-exploration and self-presentation. Van Gogh’s self-portraits aren’t just likenesses; they’re emotional landscapes. The intensity of his gaze and the swirling brushstrokes is his mental state is embedded in the paint.
Frida Kahlo, too, turned self-portraiture into autobiography. Her paintings aren’t just depictions; they’re confessions. The pain, the passion, the defiance — all of it laid bare in her eyes, in the surreal symbols that crowd her canvases. Looking at a Frida Kahlo self-portrait feels almost intrusive, as if we’ve been given access to something deeply personal.
Self Portrait by Vincent Van Gogh
In contrast, modern self-portraiture, especially in the form of selfies, often serves a different function. Instead of exploration, it leans toward validation. The goal is less about asking “Who am I?” and more about declaring “Here I am.” But that doesn’t mean the modern selfie is devoid of depth. Even the most casual front-camera snap carries layers of meaning: confidence, insecurity, self-acceptance, performance.
Why We Can’t Look Away
So, why do we stare? The answer lies somewhere between biology, psychology, and culture. Portraits, whether they’re centuries-old paintings or fleeting digital images, tap into something fundamental about being human: the need to see and be seen.
Portraits hold a mirror to our existence, collapsing time, identity, and space into a single moment of recognition. They immortalise, distort, question, and celebrate what it means to be human. And yet, in the age of AI-generated faces and hyper-filtered selfies, the lines between representation and fabrication have never been more blurred.
Perhaps we stare because we’re searching for pieces of ourselves. In every face we study, there’s an echo of our own humanity — our joys, our fears, our contradictions. A good portrait doesn’t just capture a person; it captures a moment of truth, however fleeting.
I’m certain centuries from now, art historians will analyse our social media portraits the way we now analyse Rembrandt's self-portraits, searching for signs of existential despair, artistic intention, or simply a good lighting setup. Or maybe, in an ironic twist, future generations will stare into eerily perfect AI-generated portraits and ask the same question we do when we look at a Holbein or a Sherman: Who, exactly, are we looking at?
And maybe, just maybe, we keep staring because we know that, at some point, someone else will stare back at us.
S xoxo
Written in London, England
11th March 2025