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.