Images and especially (self-)portraits have become very powerful in relation to teacher identity (see Lawrence-Lightfoot and Hoffmann Davis 1997). In many discussions on professional development the static view on identity (i.e. identity as synonymous with the teachers role and function) has moved over to a dynamic view of identity as an ‘ideological becoming of a person’ (Baktin in Weber and Mitchell 1995, p. 25). A model of becoming reveals the incompleteness of identity. From this angle, the question: ‘how do you see (yourself as) a teacher?’ seem to involve necessarily image-making. Images, following Weber and Mitchell, are constructed and interpreted in attempts to make sense of human experience and to communicate that sense to others. In this way, they are subject to reconstructions and reinterpretations. Furthermore, while images always have and maintain some connection to people, places, things, or events, their generative potential in a sense gives them a life of their own, so that we not only create images (of a teacher, of ourselves as a teacher), but are also shaped by them (Weber and Mitchell 1995, 21).

This study is an exploration of portraits in a critical discussion with the current view on portraiture as a research tool for identity building in teacher education. More particularly, it addresses the question: ‘what is (it to make) a portrait (of a teacher)?’ Drawing on the work of the French philosopher J.L. Nancy Le regard du portrait (2000) we will argue that the identification of the person is not essential to a portrait. On the contrary, a portrait presents or resembles itself: it brings to the light a subject that is distracted from all its expression and just self-present. Firstly, we will focus on the issue of representation. Central to the genre of portraiture seems to be the aspect of likeness/resemblance (mimesis). However, we will argue that a portrait is not essentially an image of. The portrait does not refer to the original, i.e. a model, an idea, a mental representation, a context or history. Moreover, and in contrast to a metaphor, a portrait has no ideological basis that gives it special symbolic power to expand its meaning. The portrait shows the image as image; a likeness without identification. Secondly, the portrait illuminates not an ‘absent past’ but an ‘absent present’. A portrait does not simply further the continuous development of our professional identity but opens up a free space ‘to act differently’ (see Foucault 1986, 8-9). Thirdly, we want to emphasize the aesthetic aspect of the portrait, i.e. portrait as ‘a work of art’. While in the current view on portraiture, (narrative) knowledge is necessary a means to appropriate ones own appearances based on the assumption that there is a separation between the ‘image’ and the ‘thing’, in our understanding a portrait wants to bring back to the light the appearance as appearance. What is ‘illuminated’ is an experience: an ‘aesthetics of existence’ and not an ‘idea of living/teaching’ (see Foucault 2005, p. 530-531).

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