Why does everything need a face in the 21st century? Big eyes, smiling mouths: faces on billboards are meant to evoke feelings, trust, intimacy – all key concepts in 21st-century advertising. However, the belief in the power of faces has a long history. Historian and publicist Valentin Groebner explores this in his insightful, elegantly written essay. Whether it’s images of saints, Renaissance portraits, or photographs, all these images reveal much about the skills of their creators, but little about the people depicted. In the end, the question arises as to how much we really want to resemble these faces – because there are no autonomous self-faces. The volume contains 37 black-and-white illustrations.