“All photographs testify to time’s relentless melt” Susan Sontag In Plato’s Cave. Photographs speak so many words; yet can say so little at the same time. Photos never seem to fade and neither does the memories, no matter how much time passes by. Have you ever looked at two photos of someone and realized how similar yet so drastically different they are? It is a lot easier to look at two photographs of a stranger and describe them with similarities and differences than when it is about you.

When asked what a selfie is, I would say that it is how we portray ourselves to the outside world. We want other people to think the things we truly wish were true; such as, every little thing about our life is exciting, I go out every weekend, everyone in town knows me and wants to take pictures together. When I personally take selfies, my hair always has to be a perfect mess, or perfectly placed how I desire. I do this because I am a hairstylist so I love for that to come off in my pictures that I care about my hair so everybody else should care about their hair as well. Also for insecurity reasons I have a hand somewhere near my face and either a smile or no smile. The hand serves as a protection layer to help give me an extra confidence boost; some may call it a security blanket. Some pictures on my social media have a smile and others don’t, to get to a deeper meaning, if there is no smile most times means that I tried to take too many pictures and could not find one that I liked so I started to get upset. Other times if I am smiling, I truly am in a good mood and want to share it with everybody else. I am not sure about anyone else, but seeing other people in a good mood or thriving in life in whatever aspect, my spirits get lifted so I hope to do that for others subconsciously. On the other hand a self-portrait is a photo taken by us again, but is how we see ourselves, whom we really are. Whether it is what defines us, such as a career or a sport/hobby or simply what makes us happy in life. Susan Sontag wrote in In Plato’s Cave “All photographs are memento mori.” To me that mean all photos are memories, whether you think a selfie is a memory or not. Twenty years from now your hair is not going to be the same color, you might have wrinkles or you might be balding. Looking back on those photos are memories of what you had in that time when it was taken. Years from now when my photos are forever roaming the internet and my kids or grandkids or even I just starting looking through the good ole days I will look back on all of my photos whether it be my selfies or group photos I will always have the memories of taking them to tell stories. Especially one photo in particular, my self-portrait. This photo in particular speaks more than a million words to me, for starters my pride and joy is pictured- my career. For my self-portrait I chose to include my shears. Yes I said shears and not scissors, during school we were never allowed to say that word it was considered a foul word. Trying to figure how to make my self-portrait was actually starting to eat at me. I finally came to the conclusion that one thing in my life that never fails to make me always feel good about myself is my work. I love being able to make other people feel good about them. Some people take their hair for granted and say the same thing “its just hair” however for some people it is so much more than just hair on top of your head. Most women feel like their hair is whom they are and that they would never be the same without it. Hair is something that you can change the color or change the style and you feel like “a new person” a new you, kind of like you are wearing a mask. Everybody wears a mask, it may not be every single day but for some people it might be every single day. This mask may be just for social media, for strangers we see every single day or simply just for ourselves. It’s very hard to fully be able to please yourself, if you really think about it, yes we may be happy about everything on the outside but deep down inside there is always that one little thing that truly makes us frustrated or upset. Those little insecurities’ that we all have, some people don’t like to make it known that they have these because they think it makes them look weak, when in reality we all are. Everyone has a weak side, we can try our best to put up a front about it to society and try to ignore it, but it will always be there. The second reason why this photo speaks so much to me is my ring, this ring means more to me than anyone could ever image. Not only is a Claddagh ring a symbol of Irish identity, but also the diamond in it was my grandmas. My grandma passed when I was one or two years old so it means a lot for me to have a part of her with me everyday. Both pictures are of me, but they both show my two different sides. In one you have a woman with a goofy face on, perfect hair and makeup, who took the picture 20 times to try to find the one that is “insta worthy”. Looking for the one photo with the least amount of flaws. In the second picture you have a woman who is genuinely happy in this moment in time, in my career making people feel beautiful about themselves, even if its just for a day or for the rest of their life. As Susan Sontag wrote in In Plato’s Cave “To collect photographs is to collect the world” photographs speak a million words, any one image can simply tell anyone in the entire world you whole life in one little picture. Photos last like memories, as much as they may fade, they follow us forever. You can never get rid of them.

The little things in a photo that an outsider might never notice after looking at it over a hundred times, could me more than the world to the photographer or the subject of the photo. The memories from photos dating back from the 1800’s still play a huge role in our society today and our photos from 2020 will do the same in the future and people will look back at these old photos from our time thinking about how things were so different now than they are when they see them. People from the 1800’s probably never thought that photos they were starring in would be printed in millions of books, looked by billions of people or even at the tip of our fingers decades later.

Works Cited

Sontag, Susan. “In Plato’s Cave.” On Photography, Dell Publishing, 1977, pp. 3-24. Composition Flipped, writing101.net/flip/wp-content/resources/documents/sontag-in-platos-cave.pdf