Conceptual artist Gillian Wearing’s (b. 1963) psychologically intense photographs and videos examine the tensions between self and society in an increasingly media-saturated world. The National Gallery of Art has been given Wearing’s My Polaroid Years (1988–2005) by Trisja and Tony Podesta, whose many gifts have contributed significantly to the contemporary holdings of our museum.

Wearing explores how lens-based media is particularly apt to ask questions about who we are and how we represent ourselves to the world. Drawn from the artist’s personal archive, My Polaroid Years consists of 148 instant Polaroid self-portraits. The project started when Wearing was 24 years old and part of the graduate art program at Goldsmiths College in London and continued until she was 42 years old and working on her major series Family Album. This rare group of photographs is displayed in a wooden vitrine like museum artifacts. Organized roughly in chronological order, the pictures reveal the artist’s experiments with different wigs and hairstyles, makeup, lighting, and poses.

A significant early work, My Polaroid Years reveals Wearing’s growing interest in the performative nature of the self-portrait as it shifts between public and private, documentary and fiction, and raw improvisation and carefully staged actions. Wearing’s careerlong fascination with identity formation and self-documentation is shared by many artists already in the National Gallery’s collection. Her use of Polaroid technology, for example, draws striking connections with artworks and photographs made by Andy Warhol. Both artists examine the human condition in a way that audiences connect with—especially through their instant Polaroid portraits, which resemble today’s selfies.