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November 06, 2005

bell hooks & Barthes Readings

I have a love affair with photographs because they can capture and show me the "perfect me" - the me I'd like to be. If they happen to capture a me who I don't want to be, I'm a little petulant and I turn away from them.

I reasoned, particularly after reading bell hooks's experiences, that this fascination comes from my recognizing from an early age that I could own a reality in photographs that might indeed be different from my own. My mother, an artist, took a series of large b&w photographs of me in early childhood that portray me as happy and my surroundings as idyllic although they where anything but. And I lost my childhood surroundings and naïveté with my mother's first divorce. I remember asking to see these photographs in subsequent years and they were one of the first things I appropriated from my mother when I was a teenager.

I thought for a time that I was interested in photography and although I am, I realized that my obsession lay in seeing myself represented in them. On the one hand I’m drawn, like others, to try achieve the perfect toothy smile and posture that accentuates thin or smooth body lines but on the other I’m fascinated by photographs in which I am unaware of the camera and captured as others see me.

Both Barthes and bell hooks are drawn to the photographs that they feel captured the essence of someone they knew and loved deeply. I think I seek to see my own essence captured – to see myself as others do and yet at the same time to try and assure myself that I am the me I wish to be seen as. I wonder if any of these are truly me or whether in 60 years time someone will go through my album and find an unassuming photograph I’d have dismissed and say “there she is!”

~ Nanette

Posted by lcissavides at November 6, 2005 10:17 AM

Comments

I really liked your posting. I think it is hard to reckon with images of ourselves, for we want to present ourselves in a certain way and we cannot always do so. In visiting my friends' dorms in recent weeks, I have found many particularly awful photographs of myself on their walls. When I ask about it, they always say, "But, Brenna, I love that picture!". So I moan and groan, but the picture always stays. Similarily, when two of my friends came to Simmons a couple of weeks ago, they complained about pictures I had up of them. However, I feel that their essence as individuals shows through in many of these photographs. A picture of Stefanie leaning in to pretend to kiss Nada while Nada pulls away is a great representation of their of relationship and personalities. I think this comments on how we want pictures of ourselves to be--we want to have pearly white teeth, a great smile, perfect hair, a thin body, and so much more. But, for our friends and families it doesn't really matter--they want to be reminded of us as they know us.
--Brenna D.

Posted by: Brenna at November 6, 2005 12:00 PM