Foundation 4D – Self Portrait
Definition Of Self Portrait
According to Ina Loewenberg, a self-portrait “is an artist’s presentation of self”. ( Loewenberg, 1999, p. 399 )
Self Portrait To Me …
Self Portrait helps me to express the feelings that I am not able to voice out in words through photos or pictures. I classified self-portrait into two categories, abstract or performative. Abstract self-portraits are more of expressing the feelings or emotions through more abstract elements such as lightings, shadows etc, whereas performative self-portrait is where the “object” will be placed in an act or situation, creating a reaction based on the circumstances.
Photographer Reference
Alan Warhol
Andy Warhol’s self-portraits are mostly screenprint with a bright colour onto a black canvas. A comment made by Warhol in 1967 supports mentioned to only look at his work at the surface instead of looking behind it. He seems to ask the viewer only to examine the surface of his features rather than what they carry or represent.
Vivian Maier
Vivian Maier used photography as an escape from her daily routine as a nanny. Throughout her life, she has taken more than 150,000 pictures and in the majority of them, interesting self-portrait photography ideas are implemented. Vivian’s portraiture often used the reflection of windows or mirrors to capture the shots. By looking at her photography, you can tell the way how she wanted to be represented rather than her true self in reality.
Kyle Thompson
Kyle Thompson is a surreal self-portrait photographer. He always inspired bu deserted locations such as macabre forest or abandoned buildings. Besides that, as a true nature lover, his self-portrait mostly carried some natural elements. Kyle also loves to emphasise his bias towards surrealism and often uses effects which are typical for this style: smoke, water, mirrors and balloons to help him show abstract concepts.
Conceptualization
Theme
Views And Labels
In the beginning, I was thinking of working on a theme about how views or labels work on me. I listed out the difference between how people view me and how I view myself, making a contrast between each different views or labels.
Changes In Concept
However, after much consideration, I feel that the concept of “Views And Labels”, three self-portraits make it hard to bring out the contrast and thus I venture into exploring a more emotional concept which is something I have been through not long ago.
I decided to work on the topic of “Adulting”, using self-portrait to express the strong emotions and significant event that happened throughout my adulting journey. I venture into exploring the different phases/ stages of my adulting journey and grouped it under three categories: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced stage.
Stage #1 – Beginner
Dilute
I want to use different glass with ink dropped into the water and diffuse to signified the dilution of society. To me, as I start growing up, I receive more and more opinions and views from outsiders, these opinions and views actually slowly diluting my thoughts and how I act and see things. During adulting, I think it is really how you find yourself in this diluting society.
Loneliness
I realised I am maturing into an adult when I start to feel lonely when I am within a group of friends. Even though I am also participating in the conversation, laughing my lung out, but deep down, I kept holding to the thoughts of how no one really understands me.
I want to use a long exposure and the depth of photo to capture other people with movement around me but I will be to the only person who is in still and sharp. This makes a contrast between the outside world which is constantly moving and without my participation, life still goes on, thus expressing the loneliness I felt deep down in my heart.
Stage #2 – Intermediate
Stress
Stress is one of the things that will constant drown me during the adulting period. The stress may be about something that has happened, the uncertainty in the future and of all the desire that I have. It is due to all of the stresses, I am constantly in an insecure state.
Thus, I want to portray this state of stressful emotion with a backdrop shadow of myself, troubled by all these thoughts that only appeared in the dark.
Reflection Time
Using the reflection of MRT window
During the time when I commute, I feel like it is the time for me to reflect and think of things or event that has happened. As during this time, I am Alone and I do not need to accomplish or work on any tasks. I have all this time by myself and to myself only, which is why it is a good time to think.
Using the reflection of Office Window
During my working days, I will always reach office 30 minutes early so I am able to be alone in the office. I really treasure these times as I am able to stay quiet and focus, planning my goals and objective I wanted to achieve for the day.
Stage #3 – Advanced
Three Wise Monkeys
I heard about the three wise monkeys since young, but I didn’t really understand why is so ‘wise’ about the monkey as I don’t see the need of following the rules of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”.
It is only when I started to work, maturing myself in the society, I learnt that there are times when I need to ‘not see’, ‘not hear’ and ‘not speak’. The more complex social circle you are in, the harder you will learn about these rules. I think this is one of the “adulting’ rules I learnt and follow in heart, helping me to be a mature and responsible adult.
Camouflage
Eyes are the window to emotions and thoughts of a person, and that works for me as well. During my working period, I have always tried my best to hide the emotions in my eyes, and also control the words that flow out of my mouth. I also pay extra attention to this when I am communicating with my friends and people around me.
I am planning to play with a long exposure, creating with a blur motion of hands covering the eyes and mouth to symbolise the restriction and controls that I had to have for my mouth and eyes.
Self Portrait Production
Loneliness
I wanted to express loneliness with the reflection of my office window at night. Thus to make a contrast, I stood alone at the corner of the room when everyone is gathered at the side of the table to chit chat and playing game. Due to the lighting of the office, I am not able to create a bright and dark contrast with my raw photo, thus I edited it slightly with Photoshop.
Stress
For stress, I used my house toilet as the stage, it is a place where I think and reflects a lot, especially during my shower. There is a period of time where I shower in the dark with little lighting as I do not want to disturb my family as they are already in sleep. To me, darkness gives me a sense of security, it feels as if I am able to put everything under control and have a clearer mind to reflect on what is going on. I am someone who is good at hiding my emotions, especially the more negative side. I do not usually cry or shed any tears, but sometimes when I am really nearing the edge of stress and could not contain it anymore, I chose to release my stress and fear in the shower where I can do it alone and prepare myself again to face the world later.
Camouflage
I have tried to use a long exposure to create an effect of me covering my eyes and opening it. This signified how I am able to have control of how I view the world and what I want people to see me as.
I tried it over a white background to keep the audience to focus on me only. The photographs were taken with spectacle and without spectacle to see which one create a greater impact. Also, I edited the photo into a monotone tone to express how I want my world to be more simple, either black or white, good or bad.
Final Presentation – Self Portrait & Artist Statement
Artist Statement
Adulting
Why do you not smile as bright when you grew up?
Where is your voice? Why do you stop asking questions?
What stops you from having fun?
Do you still enjoy the company of your friends?
Why can’t you sleep at night?
When do you learn to cry in your shower?
Is the weight on your shoulder growing?
Do you stop trusting people?
Do you still sing the songs that you used to sing?
Do you start making choices on what you want to see?
I chose to arrange the photo in this arrangement to represent the time in an in the 3 stages. The beginner stage – Loneliness is the stage that I have stuck the most in the journey of adulting. I have been trying to surround myself with people, trying my best to occupy my life so I will not overthink. Whereas for stress, this is a small but significant portion of my adulting life, thus I am placing it at the top. In the end, I placed “Camouflage”, to signify how I accepted the society as an adult and is able to have control of how I view the world and what I want people to see me as.
Critique & Reflection
Questions Asked During Critique
Why do you to have yellow lighting in your stress/ shadow photo? What does it signify?
Yellow is the colour of happiness, however, I used yellow as a juxtapose against how my mental health is feeling negative and stressful instead of its positive meaning.
Why is there a transformation from using reflection to shadow and yourself?
I am someone who is not good with facing problems and when I encountered them, I usually occupied myself so I will not have time to stop and think about it. I think the reflection and shadow also signify how I do not want to face the first two stages of adulting directly and hence finding ways to escape from it. Even at the last photo, even though I am present, but I still choose to cover my eyes. This also means that even with the acceptance of growing and maturing into an adult, I still sometimes chose not to face my problems directly.
Reflection
This assignment helps me to explore my deeper emotions and face problems that I have always choose to escape and forget. Throughout this assignment, I have also learned some photography skills on how I can use different tools to enhance photography. I think if I have more times, I would actually like to try to use reflection on the MRT to create a more impactful self-portrait to emphasise the idea of ‘personal time’. I believe with passengers on the trains, it will form layers or depth in the photo more easily, helping to shape the idea.
I would also like to explore more themes such as My roles, responsibility and struggles. For example, what is the role of being eldest at home affects my views on things, what responsibilities do I carry.
Reference List
Loewenberg, I. (1999). Reflections on Self-Portraiture in Photography. Feminist Studies, 25(2), 399–408. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178687
Tate. (1986, January 01). ‘Self-Portrait’, Andy Warhol, 1986. Retrieved September 03, 2020, from https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/warhol-self-portrait-t07146
Official website of Vivian Maier: Vivian Maier Portfolios, Prints, Exhibitions, Books and documentary film. (n.d.). Retrieved September 03, 2020, from http://www.vivianmaier.com/
Portfolio. (n.d.). Retrieved September 03, 2020, from http://www.kylethompsonphotography.com/fine-art
FixThePhoto.com, T. (n.d.). 15 Best Self Portrait Photographers Who Are Famous Nowadays. Retrieved September 03, 2020, from https://fixthephoto.com/self-portrait-photographers.html
Walker, F. (2015, November 02). Street Shot Sundays Photo of the Week: “Train Reflections”. Retrieved September 03, 2020, from http://shooterfiles.com/2015/11/street-shot-sundays-photo-of-the-week-train-reflections/
