Art & culture
Liz Rideal’s Identity: a portrait made by a crowd
A 1985 photobooth project brought ordinary visitors onto gallery walls.
A booth usually holds one person or a few friends. A public artwork can take those individual results and turn them into a very different kind of portrait: one built through participation.
The artist’s account
Writing for the National Portrait Gallery in 2026, Liz Rideal recalls Identity, made in 1985. More than 1,200 people contributed photobooth self-portraits to a large collage, with a face outlined through darker tones. The numbers and date come from that attributed retrospective account.
Evidence: Artist’s account
A person inside a larger image
Up close, a viewer can attend to an individual’s expression. At a distance, the arrangement produces another image. Those are two scales of reading the same work. A single strip does not reveal the whole composition, and a reproduction of the whole composition can hide the details of individual contributions.
An exercise in participation
For a small gathering, ask consenting participants to contribute a portrait, then arrange printed copies by light and dark areas. Explain where the pictures will be displayed and let people decline. This is our suggested activity, not a reconstruction of Rideal’s method or permission to reproduce her artwork. The distinction protects both the historical account and your own experiment.
Sources & further reading
Sources for the specific facts and product descriptions above. Our worked examples, interpretations and practical suggestions are original editorial guidance.
- National Portrait Gallery — Liz Rideal on Identity (1985)Artist’s account