...but I tried...

Happy birthday! This video better not leave this blog! =P

Mask

The mask is my own face--my skin, my color, my countenance. It is me, hidden, but on the outside. My humanity which stands between my self and your mask, it seems to protect and cover and I feel as though I can be still, abiding behind, but in reality it is still skin--still exposed. My body is my mask, because it stands as a mediator between my soul and the world outside.

Though I can't see my mask fitting perfectly into any pre- or post-modern category, if I had to choose one I would place it as a sort of simulacra, because the external skin acts as what Baudrillard would call a "perceived reality" unable to contain or accurately depict the true reality of the soul behind the skin. What I'm trying to portray here is the limited nature of an image; that the soul penetrates so much deeper than any sort of simulacra a frame may contain. It's like the difference between two and three dimensions; a person is infinitely deeper than their image. Reality stands behind the frame, though so often I allow my mind to get wrapped up in the flatness of the image on top. If there's one thing I learned through this project, it's to never allow myself to be content with just knowing someone's face-skin and not the reality underneath.

Imagination Landscape

So when I was little, I used to hold myself in a back bend on the floor of my living room; imagined the ceiling and the floor were reversed, and I could wander the furniture-free floors, whitewashed and invisible. I miss that sense of escape and detachment which results from losing time in imagination, which is what I'm trying to capture here.

A Landscape

My landscape photo is one of mourning detachment from the earth—“playing inside on a rainy day”. I wanted to achieve a sort of longing to return outside where it is light, and everything is bigger. If I had to name it, I think I would call it, “Natural Things Belong in Nature.” My goal is that the viewer looks up with the detached and fallen leaves to find home not in a house, but outside.

Portraits

There is, and always will be a disconnect between the skin and the soul; the nature of perception is that it reveals a very limited impression. I see at best in small vignettes.

The Rear Window example is interesting in thinking about the plot of each individual. I talked with a friend who is very much involved in theatre the other day who admitted that she feels as though she runs her life like a play, planning the scenes of the day the night before, putting on a sort of “stage” makeup in the morning, and acting out her ideal character. I found this profound and interesting in thinking about our desire to determine our own stories and write the screenplay for our lives; the problem with this is that we end up with millions of scripts and no reality, and no ability to really relate to anyone. Lisa has to give up her own plot to her life in order to relate to Jeffries, and she just becomes a character in his story.

My ideal portrait is simply that—Aphrodite, the classical “eternal feminine” and representation of the ideals of love, beauty, and pleasure. I wanted to communicate the idea of aspiring to the ideal—always flying upward towards that perfection with imaginary, illusionary wings, when in reality aspiration is exhausting. When Derek and I were taking our pictures, we were rushed to finish up our real portraits, so my real portrait is actually really honest. I didn’t feel like I was posing, and I didn’t try to make any unnatural expression. I was tired, as you can see, and ready to be done. While the ideal portrait involved falsely modeling and positioning and repositioning so that the projection was just right, in my real portrait I honestly just sat in a chair and stared at the protrusive camera.

I don’t think you can ever have a “real” portrait, however; an image can be at best the skin to a reality beneath—a small vision and vignette sitting on top of true knowledge of a person. May I learn to know people in a deeper way than projections, theatre scripts, and images.

The Business Cycle

Landscape of my Home

So I wanted to try some extended exposures to experiment with some different settings, so a thought a good place to start would be the city at night. Here's some shots of my hometown Washington from some roofs.

Slideshow

Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, why do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

Colossians 3

This project frustrated me—let me explain why. As an English major inclined more towards language than visible art, I think more in terms of themes and symbols and meaning than the simple aesthetic, unplanned beauty of a photograph. I started with the idea rather than starting with the image. I thought of the abstract concept of moralism, and attempted to inject the idea into a set of images, rather than starting with the images and deducting meaning from them—this was my mistake. So I meticulously planned my shots ahead of time in accordance with the meaning I wished them to have. I organized and ordered and structured them… but I did not get lost, at least at first. Even when at the mounds, I came with the props I wanted to create the scene I wanted in the light I wanted; but the result was still not what I wanted. The concept was too large to be contained in so short a set of scenes. I ended going back to the mounds, and conducting at least six other photo shoots in other locations in order to capture in an image what I am normally inclined to convey in words. This project frustrated me because I had so much more to say about my subject than my slideshow allowed. I saw the photos as nothing more than a means for meaning, and therefore they were detached from their own significance.

It wasn’t until the morning the slideshow was due that I realized that in the midst of trying to come up with a way to visually communicate my convictions on moralism, I realized that I was totally lost as far as how to do it. I finally arrived at the place I should have started—thinking about the image before the idea, and accepting the feeling of lost-ness which comes from having no ideas. Also, the sort of structured approach I took to collecting and organizing these images is reflective of the hyper-controlling nature of moralism which I sought to reveal in my very project! That morning I took several of the final pictures with leaves included here, and though I’m still not fully content with this slideshow, I feel as though I my need to take photos without an agenda, and without frustration.

To explain the meaning—

Life is a good gift (images 1 and 2); the way of nature is to try to fabricate, attain and experience this concept of “good,” without recognizing its Source. Moralism (images 3-5) is the attempt to attain escape from guilt and a sense of being “good” through disciplined “self-help” efforts and regulations—as natural as Adam and Eve covering their shame in the garden. Moralism blasphemes against the Primal Good by claiming to possess that which He alone gives. Both life and our ability to perceive what is really good are distorted (images 6-10). I picked this subject because I have found it a problem relevant to Wheaton students, and one with which I have struggled myself. But the way of grace takes me back to a nature deeper than my own (images 14-15), a way to know Good rather than be good.

That’s the intended meaning, but I’ll let the images say what they will.

Body Interpretation

When considering how to encompass our contemporary society's conception of the body (specifically the female body), I knew I wanted the subject to be the skin-deep notion of beauty, but also hoped to provide an explanation of the reason behind this cultural though pattern. Why as a people do we see only the skin, the face, the body of an individual when so much depth lies beneath? After thinking about it for a while, I honestly still don't know why we women subject ourselves to the ideal of femininity to which our culture chains us and hides us.

With this image I hoped, first, to portray through the content the act of putting on a mask, a universal image representing the facade of femininity. The girls are getting ready for the day, seeking to make their bodies "presentable" to whomever they will see and externally preparing themselves. I hopes with the red robes to communicate the idea of mortality and emphasize their human nature which cannot be covered up and sets them apart from the external, black and white, solid and lifeless world that the girl seeks to be a pat of with her monochromatic mask.