"something about liminality"

From Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida

The portrait photograph is a closed field of forces. Four image-repertories intersect here, oppose and distort each other. In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art. In other words, a strange action: I do not stop imitating myself, and because of this, each time I am (or let myself be) photographed, I invariably suffer from a sensation of inauthenticity, sometimes of imposture (comparable to certain nightmares). In terms of image repertoire, the Photograph (the one I intend) represents the very subtle moment when, to tell the truth, I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object

I like to have my picture taken in part because I like to look at pictures of other people. Intense voyeurism is part of my intense attraction (addiction) to the internet. The relationship of voyeurism to exhibitionism in this particular dynamic of public photos produces a self-negating self-awareness. Anyone who uses facebook in order to do more than just "keep in touch" knows that the best photos involve the least amount of trying on the subject's part (despite what Tyra Banks may try to tell me every season on Top Model). To truly not "try" however, one would have to be minimally aware of having their picture taken, or rather, minimally aware of the photograph's potential final outcome. Thus one who appreciates this quality in photographs of others could never achieve it in a photograph of themselves. Photos that I like of myself are often photos in which I am either caught nearly entirely unawares or flouting the rules of portraiture by refusing to make any face or making as ugly a face as possible.

The above picture was a difficult situation for me. Tiffany wanted to take my picture and I did not want my picture taken at all. It was close to finals and I was tired and not wearing any make-up and I think I may have said the words "Don't take my picture right now, I feel ugly" in a blasé way that could easily be seen as disturbing. It wasn't a whine, or a cry for help (or a fish for compliments), it was a fact as I understood it and I think this is often hard for people to process when it comes to girls vis-à-vis their appearances. While I have come to more or less accept my face without eye-makeup, a habit I've been in since age thirteen, I still prefer to have it on. It has come to be an essential part of myself, I have convinced myself that my face looks a certain way that it in fact doesn't. The disjuncture between my state-of-mind in moments like the one at the time of this photograph and moments when I truly felt pretty was a source of distress for me in high school. It is because I took both those types of moments as a kind of truth. When I had a pretty day I didn't look pretty but I was pretty. Yet most of my days, I felt, were not pretty days and thus how could an ugly girl have pretty days at all?

Tiffany told me it was okay if I covered my face while she took the pictures. I now see that the attraction to the situation was the light more than anything. Yet as a picture of me, I love it. I have evaded every rule of a good picture--I have even evaded the definition of portrait--yet I did not have to make a blank or ugly face and thus went around my normal modes of evasion. In not showing my face there is a refusal to be captured, yet the act of refusal and the reasoning behind that refusal, in conjunction with the pose and tell-tale favorite shirt, signifies myself in all respects. It is vulnerability shown through a defense against being vulnerable. It looks like a film still of a film I have no recollection of.

k.e.