The title of the exhibition is based on the title of the book Faces, a narrative history of the portrait in photographand Ben Maddow, published in 1977 by the New York Graphic Society of Boston. It is one of the most important compilations of photographic portraits made up to that time.

Faces It was published at a time when photography was being categorised, when its cultural prestige and economic value increased and its history began to be reconstructed. In a short time, research displaced the formalist models that had been present for decades, new categories were created and another reading of history was fostered. This was the case withIdentités de Disderi au Photomaton, published in 1985 by the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, in which the aesthetic aspects or the author lose strength in front of the subject, of the concept. In Identités portrait of the artist Nancy Burson, one of the pioneering creators in the use of computers for portrait making, was also published in 1986 and who, in 1986, published the book Composites: Computer-Generated Portraits.

The exhibition is based on these publications to create a narrative based on some thirty publications between the 1970s and the present. Aspects such as identity, memory, social control, autobiography, archive, appearance, distinction and new technologies are present in the books. This presents us with some of the most innovative approaches, the new practices around the face, since the 1970s with artists such as Aziz & Cucher, Christian Boltanski, Nancy Burson, Chanarin & Broomberg, Paolo Cirio, Joan Fontcuberta, Pere Formiguera, Jürgen Klauke, Li Lang, Nikki S. Lee, EJ Major, LawickMüller, Orlan, Cindy Sherman and Yelena Yemchuk, or compilers or historians such as Jean-Marie Donat, William A. Ewing, Michel Frizot, Ben Maddow and Robert A Sobieszek.