Anthony Goicolea’s first book was published by Twin Palms Publishers in 2003. Its images are populated almost entirely by the artist himself. Through body doubles, repeated figures, and computer effects, he multiplies one boyish face across scenes of adolescent mischief, solitude, and quiet unease. The result is not conventional self-portraiture but a kind of social theater in which the photographer is also the crowd, the instigator, and the target.

Jennifer Dalton, credited as author, writes that the artist tirelessly excavates human weakness, awkwardness, and discomfort, returning again and again to adolescent sexuality, unflinching self-exploration, and the contest between victims and victimizers. Goicolea has described his interest in self-portraiture, vanity, and narcissism, as well as the body, bodily functions, beauty, chaos, the grotesque, and the perverse. In this book those categories collide rather than resolve.

The volume is substantial: 160 pages, 100 four-color plates, and a trim of 9 by 13 inches. One source lists it as hardcover. It also includes a DVD of five short films. The book documents a period when Goicolea’s practice was moving between still and moving images. He has said that video introduced the element of time into his narratives, letting him chronicle the gestation of progressive states that end in destructive or absurd predicaments.

The book stands as a primary document of an early-2000s photographic practice that used digital compositing to complicate the self-portrait. Its scale, sequencing, and essay give the work an argument rather than simply a portfolio. Readers interested in the period’s negotiations between photography, performance, and identity will find a coherent and demanding statement.