Photographic portraiture has always served a number of functions, from practical identification to typological categorization, storytelling and the intimate personal portrait. With a fresh approach, Face Time: A History of the Photographic Portrait explores its wide range of applications from fine art photography to fashion, anthropology and cinema as well as the ways in which we might encounter and interpret a portrait, from the news-hour mugshot to the glossy fashion photograph. Organized into eight thematic chapters, Phillip Prodger's engaging texts and picture edits capture more than 150 years of photographic portraiture including 19th-century pioneers Hippolyte Bayard and Julia Margaret Cameron, modernist icons Lee Miller and Aleksander Rodchenko, and contemporary groundbreakers Newsha Tavakolian, Rineke Dijkstra and Tania Franco Klein, among many, many others. Addressed to a general audience, the subject is demystified and the reader guided through the key questions of photography and more complex explorations of identity, representation and purpose. Featuring portraits of great figures such as Queen Elizabeth II, Barack Obama, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and Yuri Gagarin, this intelligently curated book aligns some of the most famous portraits ever made alongside rarely seen treasures, to tell the story of one of photography's most popular engagements: us.