Chuck Close’s portraits are extraordinary, all the more so because Close has prosopagnosia—a condition that makes remembering and recognizing faces difficult if not impossible. As Colin Westerbeck wrote in his new photobook, Chuck Close, Photographer: “The idea that his genius as an artist may have sprung from a limitation he suffered as a child is such an emotionally and psychologically loaded possibility that Close himself has blocked it out. ‘I was not conscious of making a decision to paint portraits because I have difficulty recognizing faces,’ he has claimed. ‘That occurred to me twenty years after the fact.’” The following photographs are just a sample of this artist’s remarkable output.
Self-Portrait, 1989 Color Polaroid diptych, two panels, each 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm) Private collection