Theorizing the Anti-Facial Image

Joins us for a work in process seminar with speaker Mani Sharpe, Lecturer in Film in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies.

In this talk, Mani Sharpe will introduce the concept of the ‘anti-facial image’, illustrating how it has been used by various creative practitioners in the visual arts. The talk will be split into five parts.

In part one, Mani will discuss some of the scholarship that has informed his thinking on this topic, touching upon the formal properties of the anti-portrait and the anti-close-up.

In section two, he will provide a provisional definition of the anti-facial image, defining it as an image in which the face depicted is disrupted, undermining its visibility, harmony, integrity, legibility, expressivity or continuity.

Section three outlines some techniques that have been used to create anti-facial images, before Mani identifies the psychological and political functions of these images in section four.

In section five, Mani will conclude the talk with a brief discussion about the contemporary multimedia artist/scholar/activist Zach Blas, focusing, in particular, on his notion of Global Face Culture and his work Facial Weaponization Communiqué: Fag Face.

The talk will include images, film clips and ample space for discussion.

About the speaker

Mani Sharpe is a Lecturer in Film in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, where he also acts as the Director of Film Studies. His most recent work has focused on the psychological and political operations of the face on screen.

He has explored this subject in an article on the aesthetics of ‘de-facialization’ in Alain Resnais’s Muriel (forthcoming in Screen, Spring 2027); in a videoessay examining the trope of facial invisibility in Hour of the Wolf (Bergman 1968); in a co-edited collection, entitled War Faces on Screen: Photography, Film,  and the Politics of Representation (Bloomsbury, 2025); and in a major public engagement project, entitled Facing the Mind (2020-2023).

He is in the formative stages of writing his second monograph, provisionally entitled Anti-Facial Images in Art Cinema.

More information

This work in process seminar is hosted by the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies.

The seminar will take place in person and online. It is free to attend and all are welcome.

For more information and to register, please email Mark Thorley at M.Thorley1@leeds.ac.uk.

Image

Photo by Lisa Fotios. Source: Pexels.