(Self-)Portraiture as a Departure from Likeness
from lecture two: The Mirror Image and the Inherent Duality.
Self-Portraiture as a photograph
This image has to be my favorite of the week because of the expressive quality of the artist. The self-portrait as a photograph is such an interesting concept and I myself am infatuated by the process. Self-portraiture is a very ambiguous term because, technically, everything we do as humans is a self-portrait in some manner. The entirety of the human experience is a projection of ones-self onto every situation they find themselves in. Be it a painting or a conversation, the human, regardless of the content, intrinsically experiences that thing not for what it is, but for how they themselves perceive it to be.
The idea of a self-portrait as a photograph is such a realistic representation of who the artist is because it provides two incredible perspectives. Here we are given two contrasting ideas of who this subject is; we get the idea and perspective of the observer (the person behind the camera), and the subject (the person being recorded)- the uniqueness of this situation is that these two people are the same person. The viewer is therefore able to consumes the artist in more ways than possible with other mediums.
This week I will focus specifically on self-portraiture and the idea of emotional representation rather than a recording of physical likeness. This idea came to me when we discussed the idea of a photograph (specifically a daguerrotype) as the likeness of a person. The images below truly do represent the artists, however, they would not be considered traditional portraiture as in to capture the likeness of a person. They are much more representative of who that person is rather than what it is they look like.
Likeness vs. Sameness; a diversion from tradition
Image of the Week: Vivian Maier
Vivian Maier, Self-Portrait, 1954
Vivian Maier is an incredibly special artist to me because of the manner of her practice. To me, artistry and ego are constantly clashing and it inherently affects the art output. My least favorite part about being an artist is the nearly required notion of the ego, self-presentation and the idea that art must be shown and made available. This is what makes Maier so special to me- she simply did not consider herself an artist and felt that showing her work was unnecessary. Maier worked as a professional nanny in NYC and the majority, if not all, of her work wasn’t known until her death in 2009 when nearly 140,000 of her negatives and photographs were discovered in storage.
Maier wasn’t focused on who saw her work, wether or not it was ‘good’, nor what others thought of it. Her head was clear and her practice was free of this clutter. I personally enjoyed my practice as a photographer much more before I started considering it ‘art’ and positing the work on social media and such. It felt like I was allowed to make mistakes and wasn’t nearly as worried about making bad images. Now it feels as if I am expected to make good images each time I try, and when I don’t, I simply compare myself to others and their work.
I truly admire the utter freedom expressed by Maier’s work and experimentation.
Alfred Stieglitz
Stieglitz’s series, Equivalents, is a collection of images of clouds that represent who he felt he was at that time, and particularly, the disposition he felt towards photography at that time. He felt an urge to move away from traditionalism in photography and explore new approaches to the medium.
Man Ray, [Self-Portrait with Camera], 1932
I am not sure about the process of this image, but from what I know about darkroom techniques and practices, it looks to have been printed with the solarization technique. If the background of this negative was completely overexposed and the photo-sensitive paper was truly solarized, the image would result in this flattened manner with an even distribution of light around the over-exposed area. The process of solarization is a post-production process and is considered an alteration to the image. It results in distortion and therefore a diversion away from the traditional idea of portraiture and true likeness- a technical process as departure from tradition.
Diane Arbus, Self-Portrait Pregnant, 1945
Arbus is an incredibly famous photographer because of her work with subjects in portraiture. She is well known for her ability to deeply connect with the subjects in her photos because that connection is directly recorded in the images. What I enjoy about her self-portraiture stems from that same reason. She seems to be incredibly comfortable with herself and it’s apparent how well she knows herself and how ‘seen’ she feels by herself- the same way her subjects feel in her non self-portraiture.
The jarring self-portraiture of Francesca Woodman
Left: Andy Warhol - Self-Portrait in Drag, 1981
Right: Andy Warhol - Self Portrait with Skulls, 1977
Untitled (face in dirt), 1990 by David Wojnarworicz
Wojnarworicz is one of my all-time favorite artists because of the sheer rawness he captures in his work. Most of his images were made concerning the political era of the AIDs epidemic and the plight of homosexuals in America at that time. He captured many different images, but his self-portraiture is evocative of his own claustrophobic experience as a gay man and the suffocating qualities he faces, as well as the trauma of loosing a partner to the devastating disease.
Elinor Carucci
Jennifer McClure
Caleb Theil
sources:
https://www.npr.org/2021/12/12/1063483584/vivian-maier-renowned-20th-century-photographer-was-unknown-until-her-death-in-2
https://magazine.artland.com/francesca-woodman-self-portait-photography/
http://www.vivianmaier.com/gallery/self-portraits/#slide-1
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/104AKV
http://www.elinorcarucci.com/index.php
https://archive.artic.edu/stieglitz/equivalents/
