Everyone knows what a self-portrait is. There is a camera, a photographer who must also be the subject (or a subject who must also be the photographer), and some sort of frantic running into position before the self-timer goes off.
I started taking photographs of myself a few months ago when everybody around me got tired of being subject to my lens in their faces or ankles. I became the most logistically convenient subject available to me, and thought nothing of it except that based on whatever I knew of being an interesting subject, I seemed to be terrible at it. I was incompetent at 50% of the job that was self-portraiture. There is something both specific and slippery about being on both sides of the lens and it begs a little reflection on what being a subject in this particular situation could mean.
The self-expression angle (and if you like to live life on the edge, self-representation angle) for self-portraiture brings with it a very particular dilemma. ‘Making’ an image requires one to take the material of one’s experiences as it appears and to then treat it with a gentle, investigative eye. To understand and discover, perhaps even unify the layers available to scrutiny and then to find a way to present it all to the viewer. To somehow say “This is me when I’m tired” or “palm leaves blowing in the summer wind take me back to a relatively happy childhood, standing in stark contrast to the anger I feel at the world today as an adult”, while also simply saying “this is me.” To take a surface-level self as a whole, break it down, and burrow deep to acknowledge facets of the self that may now be gently or fiercely entrusted to the viewer (as a gesture of goodwill?), and then find a way to weave these elements back together as a more nuanced-but whole once again- presentation of the self. To retain the selfhood that probably manifests best in an annoyed flick of the wrist or a mole under the chin. Reality 1.0 to abstraction for a reconstructed representation of reality 2.0 (post introspection, post reflection on the problem of Who I Am/What I’m Saying).
And the funny thing about this exercise is that it is predicated largely not just on what one thinks about oneself- an uncomfortable exercise to partake in, like taking a personality quiz- but also on how much the viewer feels inclined to invest in a piece of work that is already characteristically frozen in time, divorced from the history of the subject, separate from future moments that would change that version of that self-portrait.
Nevertheless, we’re here. And the fact that we’ve probably managed to transform something mundane or unpleasant into a beautiful image speaks to, as Sontag puts it, photography’s relative weakness as a means of conveying the truth.
This brings us to another reason why one might want to take a self-portrait: to ‘record’ oneself at a certain age, at a particular time, perhaps in a distinct space that may or may not be home. Maybe one of the more incredible aspects of a self-portrait photograph is it’s inherently subversive nature- the self-portrait, even as a photograph, cannot document. Even in the ethically dubious state of the most credible documentary situations, where situations and circumstances are available for the photographer to swoop in and ‘capture’, a self-portrait can never be a found image. The photographer has too much control over the subject, the subject always knows when the photographer is coming. It is always constructed. And then there is that internal contention between the vision, its translation into an image, and the desperate attempt at retaining any authenticity of emotion while begging the cat not to knock over the tripod. Again. And still, to document oneself as being a certain way during a period in one’s life is considered a fairly standard photographic practice, even when removed from self-portraiture’s other functions of story-telling or artistic expression.
This leaves us in a strange place with respect to my own work. Stacks of paper or a running tap are not symbols I’d use to represent myself had I thought far enough ahead. These images have little to do with a conscious, mindful presentation of the self, or even a deliberate attempt at a story. They remain- for me atleast- empty photographs that make no attempt to bridge the gap between intention, imagery and identity. They offer the viewer little information about the self. Someone else could have (should have?) stood in for me and the image would’ve been come alive in a way that I couldn’t see it happening with myself before the lens. There didn’t seem to be a good enough reason to have me be the subject. These pictures could classify as portraits. Just maybe not self enough to be self-portraits.
The photographs I’m most fond of of the ones I’ve shot are always those of other people, and for good reason. They’re sustained by the strength and narrative and vulnerability of the people who let me shoot them. All I have ever managed to do as a subject is be a mildly gimmicky substitute- founded in logistical convenience- for work that I can make better with other people, subjects whose relationship with the camera is monumentally different than mine.
Of all my ‘self-portraits’, I would really only place a couple into that category- the ones at the top of the post (surprisingly enough from my earliest work, far simpler than later ones). The rest of my non self-portrait portraits are in a subsection of the website titled “Self-portraits”. Maybe it’s time to start filling in that gap with self-portraits that are actually brave enough to live up to the designation. Or to find another sub-heading for a section now awkwardly misnamed.