Me in the Mirror

The camera's invention has changed our lives since its creation, and the advance of technology has come with it in this transformation process. In the past, photography was mainly related to art or to save memories of special occasions. Now, it also brings us information, knowledge, and entertainment. Nowadays, everybody has a camera or a phone with a camera. In my case, I won my first cellphone when I was only 12 years old. Since then, I have had my camera/cellphone to take pictures, record everything, and create social media accounts. I was always connected to social media and posting my photographs. Slowly I began to enter this "perfect" world of the internet without knowing that this would have a huge influence on me.

We live in a world with many patterns and influences. It seems like beauty standards, magazines, and the media always had an inevitable control over me. I always wanted to look like my idols and follow their style. Looking at my pictures today, my selfies more precisely, I can explicitly see what I could not when I was 12. I found interesting facts about myself, and I realized that I was studying my pictures and everything around it. The author Adrienne Rich wrote in her essay "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision," "Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves" (18). Reading this passage from Rich's essay made me think that, for me to know who I am, I need to know why. To understand why I present myself in the way I do, I have to look back and revise my influences. Looking at my selfies nowadays, I can tell how I am a personification of my influences. I tirelessly tried to follow them, but I ended up losing myself on the way—this desperate need to meet standards reflected in my selfies. I like to reinvent myself, edit my pictures, and wear makeup, probably because I had seen this behavior since I was a child. Today, my selfies do not represent me but my influences. Yet, all pictures I take has a meaning for me. That might not be the everyday me, but it certainly exists. That is what my photographs communicate about me, or at least it's what is superficially presented.

Selfies are a mask for me. The way I present myself in the online world is different from how I am every day. In her essay "On Photography In Plato's Cave," Susan Sontag wrote, "Behind every mask, there is a face, and behind that a story." I agree with Sontag. A picture is like a mask we use these days, but there is a story, a feeling behind it. I believe all photos, even a selfie, have a meaning, but they are sometimes hidden behind a happy face. That is how social media works. Where everybody is comfortable, and everything is perfect. However, we do not need that mask all the time. The way I present myself in pictures on the internet is not the same way I am with people I love; there are no filters or editions in real life. Even so, I kept questioning myself, "Why wearing masks in the online world if you are comfortable being yourself in person?" well, I found my answer reflecting about all these years connected to social media. I basically want to show my best version all the time, pretending that image is me every day. This process of not being my authentic self happened unconsciously. I did not realize all the influences around me. But besides the masks we wear online, I believe we also wear masks in real life. I am not the same person at work, home, or with family and friends. I perform depending on my situation. Of course, my personality does not change from place to place, but my behavior indeed changes. It is hard to talk or show who we are in real life, and it is even harder to portray it in a picture.

I tried to take a different photograph of myself, a selfie-portrait, and understand what is behind it. In this photograph, I showed a meaningful background for me. I also tried to let my influences behind and deliver a more realistic image of myself. The author Ana Peraica wrote, In her book "Culture of The Selfie," "Because of ties to the identity of this exaggerated, unreal person, it speaks more of itself than an ordinary representation in a self-portrait ever would. It uncovers the hidden, subconscious drives, wishes, feelings, and ideas that would otherwise stay hidden behind the neutral appearance of the object" (50). After reading this passage, I reflected on how people see me in my selfie photograph and my selfie-portrait. As Peraica explains, a selfie can tell much more about you than a self-portrait. I thought it was the other way around, but I realized that my selfie shows more of my hidden desires than my self-portrait will ever do. In addition, the procedure of editing my photos and wearing makeup might uncover my insecurities, creating another perspective to my photograph.

On the other hand, My selfie-portrait is a way more realistic view of me. In the background of my photo, there are high buildings of Chicago city, which I love. This picture represents me on my first day in Chicago, and it was a magical day for me. I was in the company of people I love, and I was just myself, no makeup, no filters, no influences, and no masks. Susan Sontag wrote in her book "On Photography in Plato's Cave," "Photographs may be more memorable than moving images because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow." (17). I wanted to save that memory as a picture. Like Susan said, taking a picture is like having a slice of time, and this memory indeed has a special meaning for me. However, my narrative about my day in Chicago is not evident in my photo. In his interview with the Britannic newspaper The Guardian, the writer Errol Morris talked about his book entitled "Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography," which said, "The only way we can know what we're looking at is to investigate it." Morris explains that there is no way to know what is going on in a photograph without knowing its context and hearing it from the photographer, because photos are connected to the physical world, and we need a narrative. I agree with Morris's idea, and I applied that to my photographs. Although people might have thoughts of what I want to transmit in my pictures (regardless of being a selfie or selfie-portrait), these thoughts will only be their judgment. There is no truth in any of that if I do not give them a narrative, an explanation; if there is no investigation, there is no truth. Photos can speak to us superficially, but you will never know what is outside the frame without investigation. Therefore, I believe that my photos cannot show my true self. They cannot show or tell who I am. They are just a superficial representation of myself.

Technology has helped me in many ways. Life indeed became easier with so many possibilities; information, communication, and creation. It brought people closer, but at the same time, it created a pattern among us. Social media and beauty standards have indeed controlled me. It seems there is a formula for everything these days; how to dress, pose, and present myself. I like to keep in mind that no picture can fully describe me. No photo can tell who I am. Selfies and self-portraits are superficial ways of representing ourselves. Both my selfie and selfie-portrait have a meaning for me. This meaning is hidden, and only I know, and the only obvious difference the general public can notice between these photographs is how I reinvented myself on them. My selfie is a reinvention of myself, while my self-portrait is how I see in the mirror. We can reinvent ourselves every day and feel happy the way we are represented in a picture. Still, we also have to remember how to live the real-life, be our true selves, and not limit ourselves to mere picture representations or standards.

Works Cited

Peraica, Ana. Culture of the Selfie: Self-Representation in Contemporary Visual Culture. Institute of Network Cultures, 2017. p.50. Composition Flipped, docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://networkcultures.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/CultureOfTheSelfie.pdf

Rich, Adrienne. “‘When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision’ (1971).” Available Means, pp. 268–282., doi:10.2307/j.ctt5hjqnj.48. p.18. Composition Flipped, writing101.net/com101/module-2/rich-and-opening-ones-eyes-cid3/

Sontag, Susan. “In Plato’s Cave.” On Photography, Dell Publishing, 1977, p17. Composition Flipped, writing101.net/flip/wp-content/resources/documents/sontag-in-platos-cave.pdf

TheGuardian, director. YouTube, YouTube, 4 Jan. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=cseXTUokd3k. Composition Flipped, writing101.net/com101/module-2/morris-on-the-pursuit-of-truth-cid3/