Mask V Self

You can learn the story of someone else you may have not known if you took the "mask" that someone wears for who they are. People can hide who they are for different things, maybe it's because of a traumatic past or maybe they are just shy to open up, so they cover up their true feelings with a mask. In the two pictures I have taken it shows the differences between how I feel about myself when I am alone and how I try to project myself when I am around others.

To start, in the self-portrait you see how I am playing myself in a game. The reason why I included this was to show how I constantly am my own worst enemy, I end up fighting with myself more than I do anyone else. In the same picture I have it where I don't have my hair combed, my shirt isn't ironed, and I didn't shave. This compared to my selfie where I am shaven, have my hair combed, and I am wearing a nice shirt. The reason I went with this is because I wanted to show that when I am not around others I don't care how I present myself, I don't have the feeling of trying to make myself look better for someone else when I am alone. Where as in my selfie, that is made to show people, I put more effort in because I want to convey the "mask" I wear around others to be that of a well kempt guy because I want to be accepted by them.

The way I reconcile with my differences is I learn to embrace them. I have learned that trying to deny the things that make you who you are doesn't make those things go away. Like the anxiety of feeling unaccepted or not like everyone else, I learned that it makes you more worried for the day these people you surround yourself with figure out the person you try to keep under the mask. To me, the mask only helps you try to come up with a way to get over problems you don't want to handle. However, I learned that if you embrace the problems and understand why you feel the way you do you can start to figure out ways to get over your problems. I try to hide my problems under the "mask" I wear so no one must see the person I am but rather I want them to see the person I strive to be which is the "mask" I wear.

The truth in the pictures is that I end up becoming my worst enemy in the end. I understand my problems, so I try to be the opposite of what my problems are around other people, instead of being indecisive I try to become more decisive. Instead of ending up being to myself I try to force myself to be outgoing and more open to people. I don't want to be tied down by the things that I hide behind the "mask", instead opting to keep that part of me a secret. However, there are times where I take off the mask, these times are around people who I trust. I usually find the settings of taking off my mask around my closest friends because they took off their masks around me, along with my immediate family. I usually keep my "mask" up around new people I meet, or in social activities I want to be the confident person I strive to be around these new people. I want to try and slowly shift into becoming the person that won't need the mask anymore and can just be them self.

People don't only put on the mask socially though they also put it on when it comes to media. People use social media to convey something that they are doing at specific time to show people what they are doing. People try to play up how their trips are going or how they look so they end up feeling better about themselves. They put up a mask about a specific topic so that they feel more secure about themselves. In Sontag’s work she goes on to explain how people went from using a picture to capture a real moment, and instead turned it into something that isn’t real. Sontag states “The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists or did exist"(Sontag 5). I believe she is trying to say that People distort pictures for their own gain but at the end of the day pictures show some truth to what they are doing at that time. Since people distort pictures to hide behind a "mask" it can be hard to tell what is real and what is fake when it comes to pictures. Sontag states that "a photograph can be treated as narrowly selective transparency" (Sontag 6). People choose what to keep in and keep out of a photo making it where they choose what they want to show the audience. This is a problem that occurs with selfies when people try to play up whatever circumstance they are currently in. But the same kind of selective transparency can be used on self-portraits. Self-portraits are supposed to be "mask off" version of a selfie, a self-portrait is supposed to convey the truth of someone or something, however people still find it hard to keep something one hundred percent authentic. A group of photographers were plagued with the same issues when they "would take dozens of frontal pictures one of their sharecropper subjects until satisfied that they had gotten just the right look on film" (Sontag 6). Even when photographers are trying to capture the true essence of someone, they still end up falling into the same traps that others fall into, focusing less on trying to pure on what is behind the "mask" and instead ends up contributing to keeping the "mask" on. This connects to the overall subject of the "mask" and how people keep editing their works to keep the "mask" on. People try to strive to make everything perfect even if it means they don't show who they are. This is where the idea of the mask comes in with pictures where the editing processes becomes the mask for pictures, covering up the details that make the picture the picture. This can be shown in the pictures that I have done as well, I took multiple pictures of my selfie in the attempt to try and find the one that I like the most, that hits the right angle, the right lighting, and makes me look the best. In the same breath doing all that takes away from the authentic experience that photos try to capture.

In conclusion everyone hides behind a "mask", whether it's on or off social media. People do it when they edit pictures to make their lives look better or try and edit something down to focus on a specific thing. Even people who try to capture the true nature of people end up accidentally adding a "mask" to them. One day people may not need the mask anymore and can be their true selves all the time. That is something that I hope I can achieve one day without holding myself back.