Elections- Jess We Can!
“Always check the lenght of the electric cord, you could find yourself stupid while shaving in front of the wardrobe’s mirror”
Trying to create something near to Jeff Wall’s works, inspired by a true episode…not sure about the outcome, but I’ve been working on it the hole day…
Today I learnt this: if you have to choose between 70 similar photos and your decision is hard to make…delete them! Or work on something different. Otherwise you could choose a frustrating path! Cheese!
I used Picasa’s Picnik and added: film grain, the effect Cinemascope. and the effect Cross Processing.
I would give the idea of a moment in a story that goes beyond it, showing the room in a moment of everyday life, with its little secrets and strange, unusual behaviours. A mini narrative in Postmodern style.
Self Portrait: Finger in nose. Nadar, talking about men in photograpy, wrote something about their being vain, much more than women were. I’m trying to meet a new part of me, not the one I’m used to act when I know I’ll be photographed. Who am I? Do I recognize myself in this shot? Is that me? Can I accept it?
I think that the idea of making a self portrait comes when someone is living a particular moment. The choice to work on yourself, with its double meaning (on your-self-portrait and on your-inner-person) doesn’t have to involve issues. But usually does. Usually the need of a change leads to go deep in ourselves, and this carries questions that “normally” we tent to avoid. That’s mental health.
The task of making a self-portrait impose a double-bind, like the monk masters made towards their disciples: you have to do it, but you can’t do it thinking with your premises. You need a change in your epistemology, a jump in your evolution. Are you ready for a change? This is the first step towards creativity.
This image reminds me of Narcissus and Goldmund. When Goldmund loves a woman for the first time, he realizes how similar can be facial expressions of pain and pleasure. Having a finger in your nose, with that certain purpose, should lead to pleasure, but I don’t look like that.
A photographer can get the real essence of person, as I heard about Avedon’s Marylin Monroe,1957. In my opinion identity is you in different contexts. A photo will not give my identity, but a part of me. That’s why I chose a long exposure and a non-focused image. To keep distance.
First Self Portrait: Saudade. I was talking with my friend Gabriel, from Brasil, about that particular kind of homesickness they call “saudade”. There isn’t a translation in english for that. It involves a sense of loss for something that in a particular moment is missing, activating thoughts about past and future. How life would have been if you had made different choices. But we are men of XXI century, that’s not easy for us to admit, even to ourselves, that we do think in that “girly way”. We didn’t expect that we could miss our girlfriends so much. Awareness sometimes arrives thanks to a good chat…
