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‘Self-portraits differ from other pictures of us in that the creation of a true self-portrait is not affected by anyone else. They are pictures of us – of our bodies or of something that we feel stands for us. We have control of all aspects of image-making, from beginning idea to finished image. Because they are pictures of the self, made by the self, they have the potential to be powerfully self-confrontational and undeniable’1.
My concept for the ‘Self Portrait’ was to experiment with various techniques, with each image representing me or my engagement with the camera in a different way.
I decided to capture my self demonstrating three different types of a self portrait. Each image would be determined by my gaze, whereby each shot would be focussed in the following ways:
- Gaze averted
- Gaze directly toward the camera
- Gaze engaged with something ‘other’ or with an inanimate object
Susan Sontag in her book ‘On Photography’ describes the differences between an averted gaze and a gaze engaged with the cameras lens.
She states ‘In the normal rhetoric of the photographic portrait, facing the camera signifies solemnity, frankness, the disclosure of the subject’s essence. That is why frontality seems right for ceremonial pictures (like weddings, graduations) but less apt for photographs used on billboards to advertise political candidates. (For politicians the three-quarter gaze is more common: a gaze that soars rather than confronts, suggesting instead of the relation to the viewer, to the present, the more ennobling abstract relation to the future.)’2
With my images I used these ideas to see the effect they would have, enabling me to experiment in the future when I use portrait photography. With the first image (1) for example I chose to look directly towards the camera and it seems to produce a confrontational type of stare, as though I am looking directly at the viewer. I believe the image captures a contemplative emotion as I allow the camera to take a series of around ten quick fire images whilst I adopt various impulsive poses. This photograph was chosen from around fifty images taken on that day and I feel it best captures my feelings on that day. What I am attracted to with this image is my hand which almost covers my whole mouth. I hadn’t planned to pose in this way, so perhaps this was some form of subconscious tell of my emotional or thoughtful state on this day and I think it resembles Auguste Rodin’s statue ‘The Thinker’. I was allowing the camera to take control of the situation with its timed shutter release rather than ‘I’ ‘the photographer’ being in complete control of the moment the trigger was released. I think the contemplative emotion has something to do with giving away this control and relying on the technology to capture the image; I was perhaps preoccupied with whether or not this method of photography would work and this is perhaps why the image has turned out like it has.
With the second image (2) I chose to adopt what Sontag describes as the ‘three-quarter gaze’ and also used a wireless trigger so that I could control the precise moment when the camera would capture my image. Instead of looking like a politician with a soaring gaze as Sontag describes I, however, appear more despondent. This probably reflects my attitude to how awkward I felt taking a photograph of myself. I am so used to taking pictures of other people that the notion of being in front of the camera is one I can now empathise with when people say they ‘don’t like being photographed’. Portrait photographer Christina Nunez has used the idea of the trigger release in her project ‘The Self-Portrait Experience’. I believe that the presence of the trigger in the images is a powerful tool in that it demonstrates that the subject of the photograph has complete control over the precise moment when the shutter will be depressed. Thus, the way the subject poses in the image is predetermined by them and them alone. Nunez states that in ‘the self portrait we are author, subject and spectator’3 she also says that ‘the self-portrait is the only possible image of the creator of that image, in the precise moment of the creation of the image. It is the portrait of our creative self, of our higher self’4. In my image I am the creator, in control of the shutter but I am at the same time obviously engaged with something of a distraction whether mentally or physically.
Whilst the backgrounds in all three photos are relatively desolate and sparse I think the images capture particular emotions which I, as the photographer and the photographed may only know. With the third image (3) for example, I have chosen to capture my gaze engaged with an object in this case a guitar. The perspective of an outside viewer may read the image as me displaying an affinity with the instrument. However, I read the image differently being aware of my frustrations with the guitar, as I struggle to find the time to practice and wish I had learnt to play the instrument at school. In this sense the relatively staged self portrait can be quite misleading in that the subject or the photographed may not wish to reveal truths about themselves that can be easily read by the viewer. However, there is also the argument that ‘you’ coming at these images cold may see something that I don’t see and in fact reveal something about yourself through the photographs something that psychologist and art therapist Judy Weiser calls ‘projections’5 whereby the viewer projects something of themselves into an image and subsequently reads it differently.
Placing myself on the other side of the camera has been a valuable and equally taxing experience. I can now appreciate when others ‘do not!’ want to be photographed and empathise with their feelings towards this. However, I think the awkwardness of the situation is the main issue that I have found with the self portrait; the fact that oneself is posing for the camera rather than for a photographer seems an odd thing to do when we are so familiar with the camera having an operator. I think there is a different visible emotion between knowing and not knowing you are being photographed and I hope to experiment with this idea in the next task.
1. Weiser, J. Phototherapy Techniques: Exploring the Secrets of Personal Snapshots and Family Albums. USA
2. Sontag, S. On Photography. England
3. Nunez, C. The Self Portrait Experience. pp.45 (Online resource accessed March 2011)
4. Nunez, C. Christina Nunez’s Self Portrait Philosophy. (Online resource accessed March 2011)
5. Weiser, J. Phototherapy Techniques: Exploring the Secrets of Personal Snapshots and Family Albums. USA
5. Weiser, J. 1999 Phototherapy Techniques: Exploring the Secrets of Personal Snapshots and Family Album. USA
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