Saturday, January 05, 2008

Photo-Representation

I never look good in photographs. This provides a real problem.

Do I really look like how I am represented in a photo?

What is the discrepancy between reality and how that reality is represented in a photo?

The photograph was thought to destroy painting as a mode of representation. The photograph is able to accurately represent reality with more precision and detail than a human hand ever could. If this is indeed true, what does that say about me? Am I really as awkward and odd as most (almost every) photograph makes me out to be.? Maybe I would've been more attractive if I lived in an age when a painting was the most common mode of visual representation...

Every possible way to see oneself, either through a mirror, a photograph, or video (a moving photograph), is representation. I will never be able to know what I look like. I will only know what representations of me look like. But what if these representations of me, especially the photograph as representation, are identical to the real thing... What if I am what the photograph shows me?

Do I really look like that?

I hope not.

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