Auto Focus features the work of 75 contemporary photographers from around the world for whom self-portraiture is a central part of their work. Issues of identity - national, sexual, racial, personal or artistic - are key to all the images featured in this book. In an extended introduction, historical examples are used to enrich the understanding of how self-portraiture was first used in photography and to illustrate how the contemporary self- portrait derived and developed from those origins. The book, organized around five themes dominant in contemporary self-portraiture, provides a clear guide for readers through a significant and dynamic genre.