"...that long road which led to Me."
As mentioned a while back, I wanted to do a quick study on self-portraits. I just think that it's interesting for a person to want to portray themselves in one moment in one specific amount of space. I did some reading concerning self-portraits, but nothing too in-depth. I know that some of you are artists, so I encourage you to contribute or refute my thoughts. I came across a book called Self=Portrayal, edited by James Alinder. Within the book, there are several portraits and I categorized them. The categories include "portraying self through nature", "power", "smallness", "artistic", "vulnerable", "suppressed", "comicozzie girls", "villains/predators", and "innocent". I know how to explain all these categories, but I do not know exactly know how to give them any substance in their existence (in my mind). But I'll try my best. When people make self-portraits of themselves, they seem to be trying to portray an image that they want to be seen as. But these images might not be who they truly are. Let me explain each of these categories I put together. Please be aware that I know that there are several other types of categories. Please be aware that I'm aware that these categories might be insufficient, as well. And please be aware that I'm slightly tipsy right now. "Portraying self through nature" is obvious. People are portraying themselves as a part of nature because they are a part of nature. "Smallness" to me is when someone portrays themselves as a small portion to a larger picture. It signifies their insignificance or lack of power. "Power" would be the opposite of this. This would be a person taking a picture of themself atop a mountain or next to the carcass of an animal. "Vulnerable", "suppressed", "comicozzie girls" and "innocent" mostly tie to women. But women sometimes portray themselves as "predator" as well. Girls seem to want to portray themselves as vulnerable, weak, nude, hurt, abused, used, alone, etc. If it's not that, it seems the opposite, They'll look domineering, fearsome, and like they can jack you up. I stole the term "comicozzie girls" from Woody Allen. They're girls that are self-destructive because they know that their self-destructiveness is sexy or something to revere. So, I ran a little study today with the book that I mentioned above. Of 34 portraits of women, 29 of them were in the categories of "comicozzie girls", "vulnerability", "suppression", and "innocent". I'm going to give some examples from a community that I joined a while back.
This is a picture of a young girl on a bed. Beyond a picture of a girl on a bed is a girl, covering her face, in underwear, thin/vulnerable looking, and definitely "comicozzie-esque". The blurred picture gives a sense of movement or time passing, but the picture itself is merely a moment. So, this suggests (to me) that she is trying to represent a long, tumultuous time within one moment. The fact that she's on a bed speaks many volumes and so does the sepia tone.
Here's yet another girl on a bed. I didn't go around communities, looking for similar themes within self-portraits. These two pictures were found within the same community around the same time period. This has a very "Virgin Suicides" feel to it; a girl that is suppressed, has interests/desires that she cannot exactly pursue. She has a dark side. You can see it through the resentful look on her face. She's the portrayal of innocence, but she is not at all innocent. Just like those Virgin Suicide girls. Girls often have a tendency to follow this tradition to appear like they're less than they really are. You might be wondering where I got the idea of the "resentful look". She's looking at something besides the camera, which suggests to me that she's gazing at something that she cannot obtain. At the same time, she looks pretty dangerous. This makes a good contrast to the innocent, vulnerable look that she's portraying in the photograph.
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Girls like to portray themselves as either innocent or predatory. Here, a girl is portraying herself as innocent. She's like Alice in Wonderland, but Alice wasn't all that innocent. She was very precocious and vivacious. Everything about her is child-like. From her drinking through a phallic straw, to the dress, to the childish drawings in the background, to her pose, to the look on her face, to her body language.
Even though this self-portrait is just legs, it speaks a lot. The position of these legs is a symbol among comicozzie girls. I apologize in advance for not explaining myself sufficiently in this post. In my opinion, "comicozzie girls" want to appear vulnerable, weak, etc. The position of these legs suggests youth, innocence, and vulnerability. In this self-portrait, her legs are spread quite a bit and her feet are turned inwards. This position creates a slight gap between the thighs, making a girl appear thinner, and therefore more vulnerable. A lot of singers do this on stage; from Lindsay Lohan to Hannah Montana. Notice the shadowed stripes going across the person's legs. This suggests an imprisoning or suppression. The colors are dark and her legs are bare, exposed. She's engulfed in shadows and the surroundings are kind of indistinguishable. Attention is drawn to her legs. This leads to my pictures of girls with eating disorders. Live Journal contains communities of (mostly) girls that promote eating disorders. There is even a community where girls post "progress pictures" of their weight loss. I wanted to look at these pictures to see which parts of the body that girls choose to expose through their vulnerability.
This girl posted a picture of herself at one of these pro-eating disorder communities. My motive in studying these pictures of girls showing off their bodies for the sake of showing off their desire to be "perfect" is to find, through their self-portraits and the way they represent themselves, how they want to be portrayed. This girl not only has qualms about her weight, but "appears" be going through body-image/self-image issues. She is aiming to lose weight, has tattoos on her body, and has her hair dyed unconventional colors. By the way that she is touching herself, she is sub-consciously (or consciously?) trying to emphasize the slenderness of her mid-area. She does not look straight at the camera, suggesting, "I don't need to look anymore to see if you're looking at me." Yes, I know I sound extremely judgmental right now. I can hear all the arguments... "Just because she has a tattoo...", "What right do you have...", "You don't know her...", "Just because her hair is green and yellow...", "You're just like the rest of them..."
I'm really not trying to be biased or judgmental here. I'm just simply pointing things out one at a time and at a very random and unorganized order. I promise I'm getting at something here. This is a really raw study.
Here's another one.
Again, with the legs. Her legs are joined at the knees, giving her a thinner looking thigh. She's obviously trying to emphasize her clavicles and thin arms. Comicozzie girls focus on these aspects: any protruding bone in the body, props that signify addiction, pain, constraint (cigarettes, booze, facial expressions, beds, nudity), large eyes, child-like attire, isolation, loneliness, shadows, piercings/tattoos/body modification, large lips, straight/crazy hair, makeup, music. Comicozzie girls often portray themselves as too much or too little of something. They want to be found at extremes, for they fear being ordinary. If they portray themselves as ordinary, it seems to be a way for them to use ordinariness as a way to be an individual rather than them just trying to emphasize that they're ordinary in real life.
Of course, there is so much to be said about the self-portrait. I didn't touch upon much of anything, bust just managed to produce stereotypes (mainly among young women) when it comes to the art of self-portraits. Self-portraits can be (or always are) very intimate, and it's fascinating to be a part of that intimacy as the viewer. When looking at self-portraits, we tend to not really think of it as an auto-biography, but more as the artist portraying him/herself as an artifact of time. Or perhaps it's a way for us to watch an artist as he/she watches him/herself.
But back to the artifact. Why an artifact? Is an artifact merely an evidential feature that objectifies the passing of time? Isn't time a place for progression? Sartre, when asked for a definition of progression responded, "that long road which led to Me." Is the act of taking a self-portrait merely a way to document the passing of time and how one has changed through that passing?
Perhaps there will be more on this sometime soon. Please feel free to take this subject somewhere new or expand upon it. This subject is not yet complete, sensible, or well thought-out. It's just a seed.
Guten Nacht.
This is a picture of a young girl on a bed. Beyond a picture of a girl on a bed is a girl, covering her face, in underwear, thin/vulnerable looking, and definitely "comicozzie-esque". The blurred picture gives a sense of movement or time passing, but the picture itself is merely a moment. So, this suggests (to me) that she is trying to represent a long, tumultuous time within one moment. The fact that she's on a bed speaks many volumes and so does the sepia tone.
Here's yet another girl on a bed. I didn't go around communities, looking for similar themes within self-portraits. These two pictures were found within the same community around the same time period. This has a very "Virgin Suicides" feel to it; a girl that is suppressed, has interests/desires that she cannot exactly pursue. She has a dark side. You can see it through the resentful look on her face. She's the portrayal of innocence, but she is not at all innocent. Just like those Virgin Suicide girls. Girls often have a tendency to follow this tradition to appear like they're less than they really are. You might be wondering where I got the idea of the "resentful look". She's looking at something besides the camera, which suggests to me that she's gazing at something that she cannot obtain. At the same time, she looks pretty dangerous. This makes a good contrast to the innocent, vulnerable look that she's portraying in the photograph.
\
Girls like to portray themselves as either innocent or predatory. Here, a girl is portraying herself as innocent. She's like Alice in Wonderland, but Alice wasn't all that innocent. She was very precocious and vivacious. Everything about her is child-like. From her drinking through a phallic straw, to the dress, to the childish drawings in the background, to her pose, to the look on her face, to her body language.
Even though this self-portrait is just legs, it speaks a lot. The position of these legs is a symbol among comicozzie girls. I apologize in advance for not explaining myself sufficiently in this post. In my opinion, "comicozzie girls" want to appear vulnerable, weak, etc. The position of these legs suggests youth, innocence, and vulnerability. In this self-portrait, her legs are spread quite a bit and her feet are turned inwards. This position creates a slight gap between the thighs, making a girl appear thinner, and therefore more vulnerable. A lot of singers do this on stage; from Lindsay Lohan to Hannah Montana. Notice the shadowed stripes going across the person's legs. This suggests an imprisoning or suppression. The colors are dark and her legs are bare, exposed. She's engulfed in shadows and the surroundings are kind of indistinguishable. Attention is drawn to her legs. This leads to my pictures of girls with eating disorders. Live Journal contains communities of (mostly) girls that promote eating disorders. There is even a community where girls post "progress pictures" of their weight loss. I wanted to look at these pictures to see which parts of the body that girls choose to expose through their vulnerability.
This girl posted a picture of herself at one of these pro-eating disorder communities. My motive in studying these pictures of girls showing off their bodies for the sake of showing off their desire to be "perfect" is to find, through their self-portraits and the way they represent themselves, how they want to be portrayed. This girl not only has qualms about her weight, but "appears" be going through body-image/self-image issues. She is aiming to lose weight, has tattoos on her body, and has her hair dyed unconventional colors. By the way that she is touching herself, she is sub-consciously (or consciously?) trying to emphasize the slenderness of her mid-area. She does not look straight at the camera, suggesting, "I don't need to look anymore to see if you're looking at me." Yes, I know I sound extremely judgmental right now. I can hear all the arguments... "Just because she has a tattoo...", "What right do you have...", "You don't know her...", "Just because her hair is green and yellow...", "You're just like the rest of them..."
I'm really not trying to be biased or judgmental here. I'm just simply pointing things out one at a time and at a very random and unorganized order. I promise I'm getting at something here. This is a really raw study.
Here's another one.
Again, with the legs. Her legs are joined at the knees, giving her a thinner looking thigh. She's obviously trying to emphasize her clavicles and thin arms. Comicozzie girls focus on these aspects: any protruding bone in the body, props that signify addiction, pain, constraint (cigarettes, booze, facial expressions, beds, nudity), large eyes, child-like attire, isolation, loneliness, shadows, piercings/tattoos/body modification, large lips, straight/crazy hair, makeup, music. Comicozzie girls often portray themselves as too much or too little of something. They want to be found at extremes, for they fear being ordinary. If they portray themselves as ordinary, it seems to be a way for them to use ordinariness as a way to be an individual rather than them just trying to emphasize that they're ordinary in real life.
Of course, there is so much to be said about the self-portrait. I didn't touch upon much of anything, bust just managed to produce stereotypes (mainly among young women) when it comes to the art of self-portraits. Self-portraits can be (or always are) very intimate, and it's fascinating to be a part of that intimacy as the viewer. When looking at self-portraits, we tend to not really think of it as an auto-biography, but more as the artist portraying him/herself as an artifact of time. Or perhaps it's a way for us to watch an artist as he/she watches him/herself.
But back to the artifact. Why an artifact? Is an artifact merely an evidential feature that objectifies the passing of time? Isn't time a place for progression? Sartre, when asked for a definition of progression responded, "that long road which led to Me." Is the act of taking a self-portrait merely a way to document the passing of time and how one has changed through that passing?
Perhaps there will be more on this sometime soon. Please feel free to take this subject somewhere new or expand upon it. This subject is not yet complete, sensible, or well thought-out. It's just a seed.
Guten Nacht.