"Manufactured in Progress"

"Manufactured in Progress"

For my final, I manufactured a digital self portrait out of several self portrait photos I took of myself. I set up a color changing light and took photographs depicting myself in various emotions. Each photograph has a connection with its color through emotion or personal connections I have made. For example, the center purple toned image of me with my eyes closed was me connecting to rest, peace, and spirituality. Also the bottom center image that is yellow and shows a glimpse of my hair was made yellow because in the summer my hair gets lighter in the sunlight.

I created a new self portrait out of my own features, as well as detail shots and typography surrounding me. During my creative process and taking self portraits, I kept thinking about how do the people surrounding myself see the "real" me, as I only see photographs and reflections of myself. This is why I quote myself, "is it the real thing?" because I myself cannot be positive how others view me. Creating self portraits usually requires the artist to decide how they want to be depicted to their audience. This process left me judging how I see it best to represent myself. Should it be for myself? Or should it look nice for the viewers? This is how the media and its images influence identity and self presentation. The only reason for these feelings is because of comparison to the perfection media displays as human. The identity of a human and the identities on media in my opinion could never be equal, as there is always some objective process while presenting one's self on media. People are afraid to represent what true, it needs to more so "match" the standard of everyone else.

I decided to just capture every part of myself, the blue sadness, the red anger, the yellow happiness, the green curiosity, and the purple mind. In the blue I'm wiping away watery eyes, in the green I'm watching the world and exploring which gives me its own joy of curisoty, and in the red my eyebrows squint and the image is hazy and half toned. As a graphic design major I felt it was appropriate for me to incorporate some text in the self portrait, also inspired by the work of Barbara Kruger. Using her idea of manipulating images to convey emotion alongside strong text, I was able to put together a final digital portrait collage. The vast amount of her work made an impression mostly due to the text she incorporated, I enjoyed to read the messages that would still resonate with present society.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled

Barbara Kruger, Untitled

This self-portrait does not resemble my first. It is similar because I incorporated a photo of myself and collaging was done. The difference it was all hand crafted besides the photo. I used different tools to depict the things I resonate with to surround myself with. The second self-portrait is more influenced on just depicting myself through images and colors. This self-portrait feels more genuine to represent the gist of myself as I see myself presently. There are layers to what I encompass  as a human being which I assigned to layers in photoshop and colored qualities. 

The spectacle is a theory developed by Guy Debord but it also refers to mass media. In his own book The Society of the Spectacle he writes, "If the spectacle, considered in the limited sense of the “mass media” that are its most glaring superficial manifestation, seems to be invading society in the form of a mere technical apparatus, it should be understood that this apparatus is in no way neutral and that it has been developed in accordance with the spectacle’s internal dynamics. If the social needs of the age in which such technologies are developed can be met only through their mediation, if the administration of this society and all contact between people has become totally dependent on these means of instantaneous communication, it is because this “communication” is essentially unilateral." (Debord 14). My project came from existing in the spectacle but now I want to address it. I enjoy my work feeling experimental and not-standard. As I have created standard self portraits from my best looking photographs wanting to create the best and "perfect" image of myself. When instead now I am focusing on what I have and not trying to conform to a certain image. This self-portrait should convey to the audience the intricacies of my personality.