When You Look at a Mirror Portrait, it Represents You

Abstract Some pictures depict their objects as seen by a spectator at the perspective point. So located, this spectator is typically not visibly depicted, but is nonetheless represented. Who is this spectator? It is often assumed that it must be the external spectator, the real person looking at the picture itself. Richard Wollheim rejected this assumption as incoherent: a picture can only ever represent an unseen internal spectator located within the picture’s world. This article argues for an intermediate position between these two extremes. A special kind of picture does represent its external spectator. This is a mirror portrait: a picture of a mirror that reflects the direct gaze of the visibly depicted internal spectator from the perspective point. To explain the distinctive uncanny phenomenology offered by a mirror portrait, we need to see how it represents an impossible identification between the internal and the external spectator.