This is the rung where the whole concept clicks into the postmodern frame: the idea that identity isn't a single fixed thing you simply reveal, but something you assemble, perform and question. The best contemporary self-portraitists don't show you who they are — they show you that "who you are" is a costume you can change.
Cindy Sherman — the Self as a Hundred Strangers
The clearest example is the American artist Cindy Sherman. She photographs herself constantly — but almost never as herself. She becomes a 1950s film heroine, a clown, a society portrait, a horror-film victim, dressing and lighting and posing each one until you'd swear it was a different person. The point isn't vanity; it's the opposite. By being everyone, she shows that the roles women are handed — and the way photographs construct those roles — are just that: constructions. That questioning of identity-as-performance is postmodern thinking at its sharpest, and it's exactly what the "whose mask?" toy lets you try for yourself.
Two More Ways to Make the Claim
Frida Kahlo made her own face the subject of nearly her whole career, but never as plain record — she packed each painting with her heritage, her physical pain, her politics and her marriage, turning a self-portrait into an unflinching statement of this is what it costs to be me. And closer to home, the Australian artist Tony Albert uses self-portraiture and found "Aboriginalia" to confront how Aboriginal people have been pictured by others — reclaiming the image of identity from the people who once controlled it. Three very different artists, one shared move: the face becomes a way to make a deliberate, arguable claim about identity.
Now Make Your Own
You've climbed the whole ladder: you've seen why self-images exploded, learned to build one in layers, and learned to tell a real claim from mere documentation. Mastery is putting it together — deciding what you want to say about who you are, choosing a role or a set of layers that says it, and making an image someone could stand in front of and understand. That's the brief that carries you out of this concept and straight into Appropriation, where you'll start borrowing other people's images to make meaning of your own.