Self Portrait

I have a love-hate relationship with self-portraits and for a long time now I've opted to avoid them. On the one hand, as a photography enthusiast they sort of come with the territory. Everyone from Stanley Kubrick to Richard Avedon, Bill Brandt and Henri Cartier-Bresson has made at least a handful of self-portraits, and as a means of experimenting with equipment and light - and generally making an image in which one is liberated from relying on how others are positioned or handle themselves, these are great. Also as an indexical document of self, they are interesting things to consider over time and it's for precisely this reason that I'll try to take one every 6 - 12 months or so.

In this instance, I find the above photograph an interesting milestone. I'm nearer to thirty than I am to twenty now so, despite the fact I'm still incapable of growing an epic beard, there's a certain transition afoot here. There's a subtle crease forming between my brows nurtured by constant frowning about, I don't know, people I suppose. There's a mean little battle scar above my left eye from probably the only fight I've ever been in. And for some reason, I don't know how it happened, but at some point I opted to start wearing shirts and getting haircuts which bespeaks a certain propriety rather than being the black-clad husk undergoing a severe existential crisis below.

This photograph, by way of comparison. was made at a definite low point and within a few days of finishing university. I'm in the shoebox sized spare room of my parents house, unemployed, penniless and generally pretty desolate. I don't know what prompted me to take this, but on reflection it's certainly one of the more harrowing I've made. The usual stoicism of expression demanded by the self-portrait has slipped and given way to a weird sort of pleading like a puppy that's been kicked in the face. Eyebrows arched, chewing lip, hunched shoulders. I'm not sure if I was trying to kid myself by coming across as cool when taking this - the left arm dangling high-street fashion style suggests so - but my eyes are pretty telling in that I feel completely fucked.


I don't like to dwell too much on this period, and it's prudent to mention life has a taken a significant upswing since, but for me this certainly makes for the better photograph of the two and for me is the very plenum of the practice of self-portrait. So why my relative reluctance towards them?

Well, since the advent of the digital camera, and moreso since the rise of social media, self-portraiture seems to evolved into a whole new animal - and now they're called selfie's - and they've expanded out of the arts and taken on this weird role as propagating a cult of self. There is narcissism here, certainly, but also both an abundance, and an artifice involved that renders their uniqueness and relevance as documents somewhat worthless. I'm not sure how many photographs I've seen taken from the flattering three-quarter-slightly-above angle, or with the odd looking clenched jaw trying to produce some semblance of cheekbone look - but at a guess I'd say a lot. This doesn't so much depress or annoy me as it does fascinate me, and I'd really like to make some sort of correlative art project from these peoples images without getting sued. On the other hand it did contribute to my deleting of facebook and make me lose that little more faith in the essential decency of mankind.

I was talking to my friend the other day about the show Made in Chelsea the premise of which is basically a bunch of lascivious rich people being put in front of cameras (multiple steadicams in faux-documentary fashion I might add) in situations with their lovers/friends/enemies and 'being real', and he noted how fucked up this is because the general public, and probably the stars of this show themselves, are becoming increasingly unaware of where reality starts and fabrication ends and vice-versa. This porous muddling of what's real adequately extends to the cult of the selfie and social media - and to what extent people are now defined by their facebook page, pithy comments and the profile photograph appended to it, rather than, say, everything else.

In all, self-portraits for me are stark reminders of life's dips, troughs and rises, I subscribe to them not as celebratory or propagandistic notions of self, but as chronological benchmarks for whatever trajectory I happen to be on at any given time...

This may seem an odd post. But to be honest I'm just filling time because I haven't got anything else to write about just now. Oh well.