| Documents pervade modern life, and the nature of these documents influences the way we understand and engage with reality. Among these documents are ones we create about ourselves, as evidence of some aspect of the self---such self-documentation is increasingly salient. This dissertation is a phenomenology-of-practice study of one form of self-document: the artistic self-portrait. I situate this study within information behavior, document theory and philosophy of information. Epistemologically, I foreground the concept of understanding. I address four research questions in all, two conceptual and two empirical. First, I conceptualize the self-portrait as a document. I find the essence of the self-portrait to be "pulling oneself outward over time," manifest in the artwork's making rather than the finished product. This leads into the second research question, in which I conceptualize the making of a self-portrait as a kind of documentation. What results from this analysis is a model of documentation from the first-person perspective, which shows the Document as it shifts over time, guided by a Foundation and facing Obstacles. To illustrate this model, in the third research question I interrogate the informational nature of the lived experience of self-portraiture by analyzing examples I collected with seven local artists. In the final research question, I address the building of understanding through self-portraiture, finding that both self-understanding and understanding of the artistic process are built; I discuss how these are reached through the integration of multiple pieces of information. In discussing these findings, I explicate how this research extends the reviewed literature, and I reflect on the successes and failures of this study. To close, I speculate on ethics, suggesting that self-portraiture can be a site for free expression and a way to contribute to the ontic trust, unlike some other forms of self-documentation. Lastly, I return to the issue of self-documentation more broadly, pointing toward opportunities for further research. |
