This project gave me time to think of how to define myself through images. I could explain myself in words but it was very hard for me to explain myself through images. Throughout the process, I learned how to focus on the aspects that I want to focus on and bring them to life through visual images.

I was inspired by Wolfgang Tillmans as he wanted legitimacy of self-representation. By revealing the inner side of me, I hoped that I could reveal the fragility of my identity. My identity will be lost without a place to attach deeply in my life like my home.

Task 1: Me

This task was for me to creatively introduce myself using 3 photographs.  I do not truly show my identity when I am outside. I feel that I can only show the hidden side of me to my family and my really close friends whom I have known for years. Thus I always wear a ‘mask’ of identity that is shown to the world.

So, for the first picture, I wanted to represent ‘me’ that I show it to the outside. My skin tone blends with the surrounding, emphasising that this is not the true presentation of myself.

I cannot talk about myself without beauty/make-up. I’ve been obsessed with makeup for around 2 years and I went in deep real fast. I invested most of my time learning and researching about beauty products for the past few months after graduating from SOTA. I wanted to show my pride and love towards the beauty products.

The last image that introduces myself is an image of me showing the most relaxed state of myself. During my free time, I watch a lot of videos and I think that this is one of the times when I relax without thinking about anything. So, I purposely set the camera so that it really captures my expression when I watch videos.

In this series, I went from the outside layer to the inner layer of myself that I show to the world to the side that can be seen at home.

Task 2: Object and representation of self

This task was to choose an object that is significant to me and I chose knife. When I was young, the free time was dedicated to cutting erasers with pen knife. I used to cut myself sometimes too but that did not scare me to stay away from knife. Rather, I continued to do it till now but I changed object to kitchen knife with food ingredients.

This is the first photo that I’ve chosen. I chose this particularly to show the action of cutting. Since the act of cutting is what led me to my love towards knife, I thought that it was only appropriate to start with me focusing on the motion of knife.

This shows the close distance of my fingers with the knife to let the viewers see the danger of knife. This is another reason why I put two close-up shots (even though this is a closer shot) to focus on the distance between my fingers and the blade. The general lighting is also dark which signifies my dark side of the reason why I enjoy cutting.

The final image shows myself holding the knife. This picture focuses on the expression of myself and the emotions that I feel when I hold the knife. I went to increase the blue and purple in this photograph to mimic horror film. This is because I wanted to portray myself as psychopath. Criminal minds is probably my favourite american drama series because they portray various kinds of psychopaths and I was inspired to try to become one of the characters.

I really enjoyed taking this series as I could introduce the dark and quirky side of me that I haven’t shown it to anyone except my family.

Task 3: My World

Home is my entire world to me. I do not go out a lot. During the long break that I had between graduating SOTA and entering NTU which is about 10 months, I would only go out once or twice a month with my friends and the rest of the time would be spent with my family. Naturally, home is the place where I can relax and have no limits of showing my emotions. Thus, I chose to portray the comfortable and relaxing home as well as the place where I get ready to face the reality.

This is the workspace that I share with my mother. This is the seat that I spent the most of my days whether I am doing work or resting. Thus, it holds a lot of significance in my life.

And this shows the wider shot of the workspace that I share with my mother. We work together and converse time to time sharing how were our days have been. I wanted to share a moment when I converse with my mother as this is also one of the time when I feel relaxed.

And finally, the last shot, I wanted to show my self getting ready to face the reality. Thus, I put it at greyscale to emphasise me putting on the ‘mask’ of myself. Throughout this series, I wanted to introduce the spaces where I relax and also tense again as I enter and exit my house.

Final Documentation of photos on the Wall