Gus Van Sant’s 108 Portraits is his first book of photographs: 108 subjects, each recorded frontally at a medium-shot angle under minimal lighting. The publisher writes that this spare approach brings out both the chiaroscuro effect of light and shadow and the expressiveness of the sitters’ faces and bodies. That consistent method is what holds the sequence together, by establishing a recurring framework for looking at different individuals.

The photographs began as casting materials for the auditions of Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho. Casual picture-taking developed into a full-fledged project encompassing a cross-section of late twentieth-century cinema, which the publisher says captures the exuberance and hedonism of a decade. Knowing these origins shapes how the sequence reads: the portraits connect the act of photographing a face with the director’s practice of considering a person for a role.

Twin Palms Publishers issued the book in March 1993 at 120 pages with 108 gravure plates, 10 by 13 inches, hardcover. The scale and gravure printing give these frontal, minimally lit portraits room to register as tonal objects, and the large page supports a slow, comparative reading. Van Sant’s photographs bring a consistent visual approach to a group of different individuals.

The book’s interest lies in its position: the debut photographic collection of a film director, and made in a period when his filmmaking and picture-making were closely connected. Read together, the plates form a cumulative portrait of an acting milieu while also leaving room to attend to each face on its own terms.