Doppelganger: Images of the Human Being

by Robert Klanten (Editor), Sven Ehmann (Editor), Franz Schulze (Editor)

The digital age has fundamentally changed traditional notions of who we are and how we wish to be perceived. The music producer Chris Walla puts it this Confronted with our significantly more banal everyday life, we re measuring our actual selves against our online selves with hopeful resignation.Doppelganger presents current trends in the depiction of human beings. In today s images and sculptures, personal identities are being intensified,altered, or created through the use of techniques such as deformation and construction/deconstruction as well as the obliteration of classical proportions, visual traditions, and what is generally considered beautiful and fashionable. The book shows permutations of the outer human shell created with costumes and masks as well as photo-technical and artistic manipulation. These take their visual cues from such diverse aesthetics as Dada, surrealism, high tech, cutting-edge fashion design, and the folklore of othercultures. Masquerades and artificial characters are used imaginatively to enhance and obscure true identities. With examples ranging from the intimate to the radical, Doppelganger explores how many or how few effects the depiction of a person can take in order to function as such. In doing so, the book shows that the unique visual appearances being created today often reveal more about the identities of their subjects and creators than their real faces ever could.

Genres: Art

235 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Robert Klanten has been a key figure in the global creative industry for more than a quarter of a century, helping to reimagine the way we approach publishing. He has driven over 800 publications and commercial projects.
Robert is the CEO of gestalten, the company he founded in 1995. Under his leadership, gestalten has established itself as a pillar in the field of contemporary visual culture, design and architecture, by immersing its readers in creative landscapes, cultures, people and art. gestalten regularly collaborates with the biggest names in the creative world and is known and loved by millions around the globe for its iconic books.
He has shown how creativity has no limits in the digital age: through inspiration, inclusivity and promoting understanding; and by connecting the global and the local through storytelling.