Statement for self-portraits

Most of the photographs I took were taken utilizing motion, especially the 5 I chose for critique. I decided to capture motion in my pictures in order to give them abstraction. I decided to give them abstraction because I wanted them to be hard to read. I wanted them to be hard to read because I feel I am very hard to read myself. I usually find that most people can rarely tell when I'm happy or when I'm depressed. Most of the time I feel I just have no real readable expressions, in fact I find it EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to smile properly without forcing one. I usually have to laugh in order to naturally smile. Same goes for when I'm sad, I'm very well with masking my pain so most people can't tell when I'm honestly just chipper and in a very good mood or when I'm torn up inside and just "in a bad way". That being said in most of the pictures I don't have my face featured, and even in pictures where it is it's blocked one way or another.

The main series I focused on are 3 photographs of myself. 1 of me lying down amidst my collection of CDs and the other 2 of my arms holding up my favorite, most treasured, guitar. The photo of me with my CDs features my face however since I couldn't really use motion to create abstraction since I was lying down I simply used my hair to block my face from view. In a way I feel this one held some sub-conscious elements just taking it in briefly. The reason behind that is I also find it very hard to make direct eye contact with people let alone keeping it for more than a second or two. So perhaps that could also be another reason why I wanted to obscure my face. That being said, I'm lying around my CD collection because music is very much apart of my life, I'd say besides caffeine the only other thing flowing in my blood, is music. Also to be noted in the photograph I have the album "The Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd featured above my head. I did that to illustrate a sort of light bulb type of image, like I'm enlightened. I say that because that is the one album that really made me become deeply interested in music in general. I find it to simply be a brilliant and beautiful piece as a whole. Plus it helps to both bring out my deepest thoughts and dreams but also bring me back down to Earth with its dreariness when I sit down to listen to the whole album all the way through. Anyways I'm rambling.

The other 2 photographs in the series I feel illustrate the strength and inspiration music brings me and the strength and inspiration I seem to find from within myself. During the process of this project I became extremely burnt out due to work loads and my personal life. However I think this piece is extremely powerful because of these circumstances. When taking these photos I was shaking my guitar extremely violently up and down in front of the camera, something that should have tired me out considerably since the guitar is actually quite heavy being essentially a big slab of mahogany wood. So in essence, no matter how dark and horrible my day may be or how worn out I feel, as long as I have the music flowing through me and I'm still able to lift up and play my guitar, I can see the day through. Also to be noted in all 3 photographs I also wanted to illustrate distance by not clearly showing "myself" in general. I usually feel at times I can be extremely distant, even with my best friends. It comes and goes but I always notice a distance when I interact with people in general at times.

The last 2 photographs are a bit more playful and not as deep per say as the main series. The first one was a bit of a fun one I devised. I rented this video game "Guitar Hero: World Tour", basically a music-based video game. In the game it has a create a character feature. So I used that to create sort of an ideal "Rockstar" version of me. I created abstraction in the photograph by taking the picture while I made the character rotate capturing some motion there and also from the fact I was photographing the TV screen so scan lines can be seen in the photograph creating another form of abstraction. Also I feel the idea in general of making an ideal version of myself is in a way an abstraction of its own. The last photograph was one of several different photographs of a series. This series was mainly me doing all sorts of crazy movements with my guitar. Like some photos in the series featured me doing "windmills" while I strummed my guitar, others pictures of me in the process of "smashing" my guitar against the floor (didn't go through with it of course lol), and the one I went with for the critique is one of me "shredding" along the neck of my guitar. I chose that one because this one held so much motion and abstraction in the photograph that I was pretty much unrecognizeable and the only thing in the photo that helped me remember what I was doing in it at the time was the way the neck of the guitar was positioned when the photograph was taken. So in short, although I may be a emotionally distant person I do have a very playful side still in me. And in a way that does make sense because this semester especially I've been a social butterfly, shaking off all my nerves and inhibitions. So in a way these photographs capture traits of who I've been and who I hope to be.