Jones’ article was a little hard for me to understand completely, but there was one point she made that really stuck out for me and made me consider my relationship to images of people. On p. 148 (in the reader) she states, “…we project ourselves into  the screen, becoming the person …whose image we engage or making her over in our own…image.” I’ve noticed over the course of my life (and I have considered this many times before) that after watching films I sometimes leave the theater or the living room with a weird sense that I am the main character I have been watching, or have taken on aspects of his/her personality. I almost feel as if I have participated in a life, that is my own, through them, and that somehow we are the same person. I wonder if other people get this same sort of sense, which I’m guessing they might. This feeling can linger for days, where I may think about actions of mine differently as if I were acting them through the mindset of that character, even though the action may not have changed at all. I don’t recognize this identification often, but when I do, I feel lost within it, as if I’m still stuck in the world created by the film. I think this is the reason why I have such an interest in image and in making films; I am reaching for the desire to eventually transfer myself completely into that world of my multiple selves. This realization is new for me as I think about this now, and it makes perfect sense when I remember the fact that I so desperately wanted to be an actor or a singer as a child, wanting to actually become that part of me that was created by the projection of myself onto images of people. I had only thought of these ideas before in relation to moving images, but it rings true for still images as well. Every time that I look at an image of another person, I relate to it by thinking of how I might feel if I were the person depicted. It opens a big door for me to realize this fact. I honestly feel that I get a strange sense of being a specific person or people in the situation in which they are depicted as if it were a picture of me. I can even feel my facial expression change so slightly to resemble that of the person in the frame; which must be the case with most people. This seems to be related to the mirror, literally. Because we have the ability to constantly see ourselves in mirrors, it is only natural that recognizable images of other human beings exist subconsciously to us as mirrors of ourselves. Going back to my first blog post about the overwhelming amount of digital images, and my uneasy with photographs of my friends, it makes sense to me. The other does not exist in the way that I previously thought; the term “other” refers to the double of ourselves, not something separate. This is why I dislike pictures of myself so much, unless they don’t look like me in the way that I see me. They don’t look like me in the way that I see myself in the mirror, and this bothers me to a great extent. The only pictures I have liked of myself are the ones that look the most like me as I see myself in the mirror or that look nothing like me. I took a drawing class one summer and had to create a self-portrait. This picture I drew I copied directly from what I saw in the mirror. I photographed this self-portrait and it is one of the few images I have of myself that I think actually looks like me, even though it is not a photograph in itself. 

        I have two selves, the self I know through the mirror and the self that everyone else sees, and pictures of myself remind me of this duality, making me uneasy. Because I in a sense perform what the person in the picture is performing, it gives me the uncanny feeling that I think Barthes was discussing when I try to perform what I was performing in a picture of myself. There is a recognition there that I’m reinterpreting my actions instead of reliving them. I think Jones gets at this idea in the paragraph surrounding her quote above.

            Carlson states, “Performance is always performance for someone” even when the audience may be the self. My performance in photographs is for someone (that is not myself because I am not physically taking the picture) but I feel doubled when I look at them because I become part of the audience that is not myself, and therefore am forced to consider myself as not myself. I imagine this must subconsciously affect everyone. This is why I feel better with an image of myself in the mirror that is not actually a photograph. It is an account of myself actually performing for myself alone, with no device mediating, such as a camera. 

 

I agree for the most part with Kurtz’s article but there’s one line of his that seems too decisive and less thought out for me: “It is as if Hershman, by using digital tools rather than inventing her own, has become a mainstream digital image maker” (123). When I read it, I felt the words of one of my undergraduate video teachers echo in my head about the use of digital effects in Final Cut pro; something to the tune of “only use them if you have a very specific purpose for it, that’s aware of itself.” Basically, kids had fun with the sepia tone, or the scratched film filter, or the fancy wipes for cuts, and many video projects were splattered with these effects. The problem was that they were using it just because it was there, not because they had set out in their project intending to do it. The effects were mainly just a way to gloss over the bad material they had put so little effort into in the first place. So seeing these projects, I understood, and consequently began to abhor the silly effects and filters in Final Cut. It wasn’t until I had taken a class on image manipulation that I realized part of the reason why these digital effects existed; because if used right, they can actually look good, and can be something of your own creation. It then became not a cop-out to use digital tools that you hadn’t created yourself, but it was your invention in how you chose to intricately layer them or manipulate their functions within the program. Image manipulation produces art that is aware of the fact that it’s manipulated and it then becomes how the manipulation was used, not whether or not you can hide it. So to agree with Kurtz, it is separate from “straight” photography, but I think it knows this for the most part, and it’s not trying to hide it. It becomes a process of working with a new set of tools, rather than using ones that are not yours. Did Hershman use tools that were created by her for her previous images? I find it interesting that Kurtz first mentions in the beginning of the article that she is not a photographer because of the mixed media she has within her work, and then goes on to say that she is still not a photographer, but in the sense that she has lost something. “…digital tools therefore compel us to imagine images that are not manipulated photography – not photography at all.” If the act of taking a picture with a digital camera is not considered photography, then his statement makes sense to me. 

 

            An example of a crappy digital effect (which I wouldn’t mind the doing away of) attempting to gloss over poor picture quality:

Although I would agree that this is a digital tool that's been slapped on, it's still a photograph to me.

When I was first learning of performance art and beginning to understand what it was about, it was in a class that I was taking that mainly looked at diasporal performance art; more specifically, the performance of artists who were living in the US as “outsiders” culturally, ethnically, and racially. The class also focused on artists who explored the theme of representing “the other” culture, with the other referring to anything outside their own culture or the “norm.” Nikki Lee was one of the artists included in this class, although briefly, because of her assimilation into other groups and her consequent documentation. I still don’t know much about her but I have seen images of hers where she places herself within different groups of the “other” (in relation to her). From what I remember learning in the class, she actually spent more than the time it took to take the photographs with the various groups, spending maybe even weeks with each in order to “authenticate” her identifying with them in the photos, as well as to actually share in their own notion of their identity. To me, it seems as if her work was much more than what she presented within the pictures, and when I see them, I think of her work behind them and the time it took for her to changer her appearance and mannerisms. The pictures then become more than what they show, but they also don’t document the time behind their construction. Even though they are presented as if the documentation was the performance (as I remember them being presented to me), most of the performance of them lies in their preparation, which may not be documented or witnessed by an audience. Philip Auslander writes, in response to work like Nikkie Lee’s as well as her specifically, “These are cases in which performances were staged solely to be photographed or filmed and had no meaningful prior existence as autonomous events presented to audiences” (86). There’s one part of this argument that I grapple with, and I still am not sure what is the case. Does an audience have to exist for a performance to exist? And therefore, does it only have to be proven through photographs or are artists’ own accounts of their performances sufficient enough? If what I know about Nikki Lee is true, then the performance she went through in order to take her photographs was as much of a performance to her as any other example of performance art. And if she were to detail her experience in a way to let the viewers of the photos know the process of their creation, is that not the same kind of proof as the photographs? I feel so, and yet, Hayley Newman abolishes that stance with her account of her “fake” performance documentation. For her, the captions and photos documented the performance as well as outlined their separate processes. By all accounts, her performances actually occurred until she said that they hadn’t. And to me, the fake accounts were performances in themselves; after all, she did do the things in the photographs, even if the events described as leading up to them were false. So in this sense, I’m not actually sure what she was trying to “prove,” if anything.

            I feel that written documentation is as much proof as photographic, and that the process of the creation of performance art that is considered “theatrical” by Auslander is more of the performance than the actual document. I feel that performance can exist without an audience, but maybe the audience is the only way it can be considered art. I want to contradict this, but then again, I don’t necessarily believe that every private action people make in a day is a performance. So to conclude, I really don’t know how I feel, but I’m pretty sure I know what I don’t feel, and here is my favorite photo of Nikki Lee’s that I could find online:

     For as long as I can remember, photos have represented for me something intangible but bigger than what they were picturing. A photo was mysterious because even though the person, place, or object that was pictured might be in front of me, there was a definite disconnect between the two. The photo inexplicably felt as if it were of a duplicate of the actual object, or maybe picturing that object in an identical space; there was an inherent disconnect that made me uncomfortable at the same time intrigued. Photos were derivatives of what they pictured, but they were also something different and removed from their referents. Barthes speaks of a similar sentiment when he writes, “For the Photograph is the advent of myself as other: a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity.” (1) Although he is speaking about his own image, his statement encompasses all images for me. I have heard that primitive cultures dislike having their pictures taken because they believe they lose part of their souls, but it seems to me to be the opposite. Something new is created that relates to the object but has no actual existence except in the photograph while at the same time, something is lost in translation to the two-dimensional. I’ve felt uneasy about photos for this reason while in my own photographic practices I have attempted to focus on the “otherness” as well as special relations to ease the translation. One of the main instances of photography that surrounded me as I became interested in it was the disposable camera. On any trip or outing with my group of friends, we all had them and used them to document each other. I loved the pictures I would get back from the grocery store and how they were a memory of adventure but also seemed to show things differently than how I had actually experienced them. The easiest example of this is the smile; all of my friends would pose and smile a specific way that was different than how they smiled at me if I was not taking a picture. I often felt disconnected then in a small way from them because I felt as if they weren’t smiling for me, but for something unknown inside the camera. Another aspect of their identities was created that I had never seen before and I would continually only see in photos. As a result of the inexplicable uneasiness that pictures of my friends gave me, I bought several disposable cameras in high school and took pictures of my friends or people I knew, sometimes telling them to pose, and sometimes snapping the picture quickly without telling them beforehand. For example, my best friend at the time:

  

     I was able to snap a picture at a time when she would be least likely to pose to be photographed, and yet when I compare it to a picture where she is posing, both photos seem to represent different aspects of a person but on top of that, to me, I still feel as if I see someone separate from her that looks like her but not her. This is also why I dislike pictures of myself. I feel as if there’s some other part of me that is removed and exists, as if it is a fleeting double, my original second.

       It reminds me of a quote by the musician Ani Difranco I once saw written in an online journal: “It took me too long to realize that I don’t take good pictures, ‘Cause I have the kinda of beauty that moves.” Barthes echoes this when he speaks of himself becoming a specter in a photo, or “Death in person” (2).

      It seems to me that the increase in the production of images and sharing of them that exists today stems from the uneasiness created by the “other” in photos. Through a larger network of images, we can now choose which ones we want to see and for how long, and when, passing them quickly enough to forego analysis and interpretation if we choose. Rubinstein and Sluis write, “This inexhaustible stream makes it difficult to develop an intimate relationship with a single image.” I no longer have to address my uneasiness with snapshot photography if I don’t want to. I can look at my friend’s snapshots on the internet in privacy, not having to spend a certain amount of time on each one as if I were looking through prints with my friends in the room. I can click through them as fast as I want or skip certain ones. The deluge that now exists is welcomed by the desire to diffuse the “other” created.

1. Roland Barthes, "Camera Lucida" p. 12

2. Barthes, p.14

3. Rubinstein and Sluis, "A Life More Photographic" p.22