Susan Sontag’s essay “On Photography in Plato’s Cave” was written before cell phone cameras were a thing, and cameras were much harder to come by. Yet, a lot of her points still stand. Susan Sontag may not have heard of the selfie, but some of her ideas still maintain relevance. She talks about how most photos are to be taken at face value. I feel like a selfie just sweeps all the problems people are facing under the rug and replaces them with a generic smile. Conversely, self-portraits are a much more raw form of photography in which people can be vulnerable and express their true feelings My objective in this piece is to take two photos, one is a broader selfie, and the other a more honest self-portrait. In this piece I will attempt to explore the mask that I hide behind. In our daily lives, we tend to hide behind many masks in an attempt to conceal our true identity. Today I will attempt to peer behind all those masks and explore my true self.

I feel like the selfie I took gives off the vibe that I'm satisfied with the choices I made. It shows that I can't wait to get my degree and go into the work force. I'm used to just smiling in photos and selfies, even though that's not how I truly feel. The thing is, I've always been told to smile in photos regardless of how I truly felt. As I mentioned previously, you won’t find people that are expressing their true feelings in a selfie. Susan Sontag mentions in her essay: “Memorializing the achievements of individuals considered as members of families is the earliest popular use of photography.” Selfies are used to just document the fact that you visited some place, or whatever. Point is, people don’t care to know your problems from the selfies you take. It’s like confessing your entire life’s problems in front of a barista that asked you “how are you doing today?”. Selfies are the equivalent of you answering that barista with “I’m fine thank you”. They are not really taken seriously by people. At least that’s what I personally think. You never know what the intention is behind a selfie. One thing I can guarantee is, no one is going to wash their face and put on makeup yet expect you to believe that they “just woke up” in the selfie they put up on their social media. Just like all the people that script their “spontaneous” selfies, I scripted this one. I smiled and just took the photo without putting much thought into portraying what I’m actually feeling.

You might notice the fact that both photos are captured in the same place within mere minutes of each other. That's because I don't really take selfies, I just took one for the sake of this assignment. To tell you the truth, this might be the third selfie that I ever took in my life. I get self-conscious when I get so close up to the camera. Even though it's all in my head, I guess what I’m self-conscious of is my weight and what my face looks like. There is a little gap in between my teeth and my smile turns into a double chin the moment I look down. Susan Sontag mentioned in her essay: “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses”. In this case I disclosed what I felt like I was comfortable disclosing. Even though I consider it a point of weakness in me, I decided to disclose my smile and I smiled with my teeth visible. Without realizing, I made a lot of deliberate choices within my selfie to attempt to hide the features of my face that I deem embarrassing or not worth sharing with the world. Although it is probably not necessarily how people think, I feel like my self-consciousness is what stopped me from taking selfies. “I'm not really dying to take selfies; it doesn't matter to me”, this is one of the masks I use to try to avoid talking about my self-esteem issues and how my physical features really embarrass me.

As I mentioned previously, self-portraits are a rawer form of photography that can even be considered art. Portrait photographers and artists will make deliberate choices to try to communicate a point to the viewer. My self-portrait depicts me staring out of a window, it’s not really the message that I want to communicate to the viewer. I wanted to communicate the fact that I'm pondering my future, and I'm uncertain of what I really want to pursue. I feel like the self-portrait is more honest and representative of my message. I have never felt more lost in life. I feel like I'm at a crossroads. I either pursue something I'm not sure I like, or I fail miserably because I didn't put much thought into it before going in. When I started applying to colleges and universities, I chose my major in computer science. However, I never really felt like I was convinced. I just chose it because I was too indecisive to find out my passion. I believe that I'm going into the right field of work, yet I get these subtle thoughts. Maybe that's not what I was destined to do. If you peak behind the mask that I hid behind in my selfie, you will see a confused college freshman that doesn’t really feel like he belongs anywhere. Susan Sontag mentions in her piece titled “On Photography”: “After the event has ended, the pictures will still exist.” I think that this perfectly explains the self-portrait that I just took. When I was taking this self-portrait, I was experiencing a lot of confusion and strong emotions like uncertainty and fear. In a couple of years I will have figured my life out and got into a career that I really enjoy. However, this self-portrait will still exist. This goes back to another point that Susan made. She mentions that to take a photo of someone is to keep a version of them to yourself, a version that will never age. In this case this photo of me confused and not knowing my future will never age, while the real me will grow up and eventually find out his true passion and work in a career that he loves.

When I was researching what Computer Science majors do after college, I found out that the work they do is what I see myself doing. Yet I don’t feel like I chose the right major. I feel like a child lost in a mall; I don’t know what to do. In all honesty, I can't judge whether I'm in the right field or not, because I haven't really taken any courses that are related to my major All I can do for this semester is to focus on my work, and make sure I get all the prerequisites for my courses under my belt. Being the youngest in my family, there isn’t much pressure on me to finish up my studies and get a job. But it also acts as a double-edged sword. All my older siblings have finished their studies or are about to do so. This has caused my parents’ support to dwindle. I’ve been told numerous times by friends and family that choosing the wrong major isn’t the end of the world, and you can always switch to a different one. What I’m worried about is getting my degree and starting a job that I don’t feel fulfilled by. My greatest fear is drowning in debt from a degree that I’m not convinced of. I hate uncertainty and I wish I could find the answer to what I genuinely want to pursue. I honestly find it shocking that people expect high schoolers to figure their entire life out. The amount of scrutiny people face when they say that they want to take a gap year is terrible. I feel like if I ever had kids, I would be open to the idea of giving them a gap year to help them figure out their lives. A child shouldn’t be overwhelmed with the responsibility of figuring their entire future out.

Susan Sontag in her book “On Photography in Plato’s Cave” claims that photographs can evoke emotions and change people’s opinion on something. Sontag mentions the napalm girl of the Vietnam War as a reason people began withdrawing their support for the war. Similarly, self-portraits are a powerful tool that can completely change a person’s mood. My intention behind my self-portrait is to communicate to the viewer that I’m uncertain of my future, and that I’m thinking of the unknown as I look out the window. Sontag also mentioned that photographs offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made. This connects to my theory as to why people take selfies. People don’t really put much thought behind portraying their feelings in a selfie. They just take selfies to document that they’ve been to a certain place or a famous landmark.

In conclusion, after my attempt to share what was behind the mask I hid behind, I discovered a lot of insights about my self that even I wasn’t aware of. I discovered that I tend to make choices to conceal some of my features sub consciously. They say you are your biggest critic. In my attempt to discern why I tended to hide some of my features, I discovered that it’s probably all in my head and that’s not really what people think. There are a lot of masks that we hide behind and it takes a lot of courage to be able to point them out.

Works Cited:

Sontag, Susan. “Sontag in Platos Cave - Writing101.Net | Msmcguire.Co.” In Platos Cave, Dell Publishing Co., 1977, writing101.net/flip/wp-content/resources/documents/sontag-in-platos-cave.pdf.