nici /reselfing

 

Nichole Smith

March, 06

DANM 202

ReSelfing the Other

 

            Reselfing the Other will be an online extension of a more traditional photographic portraiture project that will focus on illustrating various aspects of the subjects lives through photographs and allow the subjects to further participate through ongoing contributions of written narratives about their images. These narratives will be stored in a database and used to dynamically generate a website that displays the images of the subjects with their own words. Supporting images and other media will be utilized to create a collage motif and possible navigations of the space will include both a hierarchal subject-centric path and two rhizomatic pathways based on similarities in the written narratives of various subjects. The focus will be on highlighting the common interests and experiences shared by the different subjects as well as providing a forum for the subjects of the photographs to write their own stories.

            The initial procedure that each subject will undergo involves the traditional portrait stage and the newer narrative stage. In the traditional stage there will be an extensive interviewing and acclimating process allowing more appropriate photos to be composed. The goal is to end up with around ten images that communicate the individual’s interests, priorities, and concerns. I feel it is essential to establish a good rapport with the subjects in order to create images that better represent them. These images would then be stored in a database and the subject would access them by signing in to an online interface. The subject then gets to enter narratives about each image as well as designating one to five key words or phrases that apply to each specific text. Each image can have as many texts associated with it as the subject wishes to enter, these texts and the keywords are stored in the database to be accessed by the display website. 

I feel some of the most interesting results would come from a subject group that starts with a core selection of people related in some semi-superficial way, such as students in a particular program, and then after the project has been established with a web presence and a populated database, additional subjects will be selected and added based on the interests of those already in the database. For example say one student adds narrative dealing with their musical interests; the next step would be to try to find additional subjects who may have the same musical interest. This could be done through poster or newspaper ads with a reference to the website so that new subjects could make an informed decision as to their participation.

In this way the addition of subjects would be in a similar vein to the way search engine spiders crawl the web; the automated programs start with one URL, processes its content and analyses it for further links. The process is then repeated on those links, mapping out the rhizomatic connections of the internet. In terms of my metaphor the subject’s interests, specifically the key terms they use in their narratives, would stand in for the URLs and my acquisition of subjects would be the crawling technique. This method of procuring subjects would also ensure that the navigational aspects would obtain interesting results. One additional consideration as to choice of subject is their internet access capabilities. This is somewhat of a necessity as I want to obtain a totally automated and reflexive text entry system. Should I desire to include subjects who do not have access it will be necessary to print out the photos and enter text they write myself. A process that is possible but results in a limited feedback system. I'm hoping people will read the texts that others have written and be inspired to enter new narratives of their own based on what they have read.

Another possible focus for the subject group is individuals who have experienced a loss of voice in another part of their lives, and this is certainly a focus that could be worked into a larger scheme. Two possible examples would be victims of domestic violence or more globally victims of political persecution. While these would certainly make compelling subjects and would add a layer of social responsibility to the project, the concern I have is that the exposure this project would result in may border on exploitation if the focus of the subject group starts to dictate the narrative possibilities. While it is incredibly important to give people who have experienced these things a voice, an internet-based project that submits their photos to indiscriminate viewing may have negative effects for those participating and may make it more difficult to obtain participants. I would in no way be opposed to including subjects who wish to speak about these things but to focus on them directly may turn their suffering into a public spectacle. So for the moment I’m going to focus on a more loosely defined subject group with the recognition that it may be necessary to narrow it down at a later date in order to give the project more significance or to obtain funding.

            One of my key motivations in doing this project is my fascination with the appeal of portraiture photography and the dilemmas that arise from turning a person into a subject. This negotiation between communicating something intensely human and exploiting the private self of the subject seems to me a balancing act between artistic creativity and a self-gratifying narcissistic individualism. I want to express something about humanity that I get closest to through images but that no single image will ever express. As a whole, the project is a narrative of my values expressed through the self-narratives of others, and it focuses primarily on understand the self and presenting that self. I find people fascinating and I want to know more about them, I am assuming that I am not alone in this fascination and that viewer of the site will also find these narrative of self and the interconnections between selves worth spending the time to explore.

            The way human beings understand and define the individual self is a social function that changes with the technology and media available. The advent and propagation of photography caused the Western understanding of the self to become more image-oriented and more public rather than private. Portrait photography in particular encourages the expression of the private as a means of exploring humanity and then publicly displays the resulting image. While the benefits of this are debatable, one notable effect is the loss of agency that the subject of the photographs experiences. They are “caught on film”, the control of their image passes out of their hands, and often they are given little or no voice in the proceeding discourse of the image. While certainly there are exceptions to this rule it is a common thread in many traditional portraiture projects.

            This project seeks to avoid the exploitation of the subject by giving them a way in which to define the meaning of the images taken. The photographic work will still be under my control and most of the decisions having to do with supplementary images and presentation will still be made by myself and not the subjects, but the written narrative that accompanies the images will be under the control of the subjects and will conceivable have the greatest affect on how the images are viewed. If we accept that these images are a reflection of self then the idea is to allow the subjects to define themselves through their explanations of the images rather than letting my work as the photographer control the way in which these selves are seen.

            In giving this capability to the subjects I’m trying to maintain their self-possession. As Susan Sontag writes “(t)o photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.”[1] While this may impart a power to the photographic image that differentiates it from previous art forms, it also bodes ill for the subject of the photo.  In more traditional photography projects the imbalance between the agency of the photographer and that of the subject can often lead to situations where the subject does not recognize themselves in the images taken or feels the images are an inaccurate depiction of their self. The goals of the photographer can overshadow what the goals of the subject and while there is no one definition of the aim of a portrait, the socially supposed indexical nature of photography seems to point us toward a broader goal of authentic representation of the subject. We expect an image that points to an original being and allows the viewer a glimpse into the self contained therein.

            The issue that arises is that photography is not completely indexical, the decisions made by the photographer as to angle, lighting, cropping, printing, framing and to many other things often have more influence on the resulting image of an individual than the subjects own self presentation. While many of those who are considered great portrait photographers use this process to create images that are embraced by their subjects, the process still removes agency from those subjects. We appropriate their image and interpret it as truth about their being and they have little active role in the matter. Linda Rugg writes in her book on photography and autobiography that “(i)mages can represent the most intimate expression of ourselves—our body, the self normally exposed only to those whom we see and/or know—and images allow the escape of our private or guarded public sphere into the unguarded public.”[2] Unless great care is taken the portrait becomes an exploitation of the subject, their private self is used to communicate the ideas and ideals of the photographer and they contribute to the process only through their willing presence at the time the photograph is taken.

            This is one of the problems I wish to overcome with this project. While I too want to use the photographic image to point to parts of the authentic individual and to communicate certain ideas I want my subjects to provide the context in which these images are interpreted. When text and image are displayed together certainly the image will capture the viewers attention first and foremost but when attempting to understand and interpret what they are seeing I intend for the viewer to turn to the subjects narrative for guidance and understanding. If the techniques of photography dictate the terms by which a person is turned into a subject and then into an image, I want the written narratives to allow these people to control how their images are then viewed.

            I also think the written narratives will allow the subject to undergo a process of self definition that will be beneficial to them and interesting for the rest of us to watch.  N. Katherine Hayles claims “narrative in its historical and evolutionary role was a powerful tool for shaping as well as expressing human subjectivity and sociality.”[3] The understanding of self has evolved over time and forms a complex relationship between “the person, self-identity and the notion of the individual”[4]. The notion of the possessive individual as put forth by Abercrombie et al. in The Sovereign Individual, has several important factors. Embodiment is the historically developed notion that an individual requires a unique physical body, as evidenced more recently by finger prints and DNA, but initially through the use of photographs as well. Consciousness and memory make up the other two core criteria of this possessive individual, and all three are in reference to an origin. The individual becomes that unique body that has grown, is conscious of having grown, and can remember the growth. The person is that which can become the individual and maintains a self-identity that encompasses this process. Participation in the project becomes a lived expression of the subject’s position as a possessive individual, however the use of images to prove embodiment is problematic. 

Seeing a photograph of yourself is an interesting experience, you recognize the image as one of yourself but at the same time it is not you. It can be temporally disassociated from the current self or just spatially differentiated from the body you are accustomed to considering your self, but viewing this image and recognizing yourself in it starts a process where self image is redefined as something exterior. For Roland Barthes the photograph and the process of being photographed is “the advent of myself as other, a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity.”[5]  The body that conceives of who it is now does so in reference to this photograph, to a foreign object that now defines the self-imagining. The process of posing for a photograph turns the subject into an object; their consciousness subordinates their body in order to imitate, for film, the self-image more correctly. How does one position and contort the body in order for it to look the best in the image? The ideal state of the image become a set of rules that govern the physical reality, that which was once proof of embodiment becomes a goal to strive for. As Celia Lury writes:

"If self-identity is not only reflexively defined through resemblance to an image of a model self in a process of individuation, but imitation is also appropriated by the individual as a paradigm of self-expression and individualization, then what does this mean for the possessive individual?"[6]

 

The process of individuation is normally seen as outside force finding ways to differentiate between individuals in order to control or manipulate, such as the way the US government individuates its citizens through the use of social security numbers. To consider self-identity as a result of a process of individuation implies a division within the self. The status of the image has become that of the other, separate from the self and no longer indexing an authentic individual. This project is an attempt to allow reclamation of the image by the self through the use of narrative.

I feel it is very important to disassociate this project from rampant individuality, the expression and exultation of those things that make a person unique.  Mieke Bal describes the cultural status of portraiture as completely tied up in the promotion of the individual and fraught with the value judgments that go hand and hand. These judgments are not only on the level of an individual subjects worthiness to be photographed but also on the level of individuals themselves as worthy of being photographed. She connects what she calls the discourse of the face to the basic assumption that the expression of individuality is of equal value as the possession of individuality. “’Face,’ here, stands as a supremely self-evident synecdoche of the human individual, a mise en abyme of what it means to be human."[7] This discourse functions at the societal level and acts in such a way that it necessitates any photo of a subject to create an essential separation between their personal self and all others. This over emphasis on distinction and incommensurability is exactly what I’m hoping to avoid. By stressing the connections between subjects I hope to help them narrate their own individual being without removing that individuality from its context.

To summarize Celia Lury, memory has become a means of allowing or denying the connections between the private and public sectors of life “through the creation of narratives of self- and collective identity.”[8] Within the scope of this project the photographs become testament to the embodiment of the subject, they emphasize the uniqueness of the subject and give proof to the fact of existence. The act of writing narratives is an act of the consciousness that utilizes the memory and records it in the database.  These narratives are primarily self-narrative but as the participants begin to reflect off of other participant’s entries in creating their own the narratives, the project takes on some of the aspects of a collective identity.

One of the two key concepts I’m hoping to realize through the navigational structure is the expression of a connectivity and order to the system derived from the narratives that a subject-centric top down navigation system would ignore. Although the user will be able to traverse up and down the string of images of one subject they will also be able to navigate between subjects based on key concepts. When an image is displayed with the text the navigation possibilities will include pathways along the key words entered by the subject about their narrative. Thus a narrative with the key word “music” will have a navigational element that gives access to all the other narratives that also have the descriptor “music”.

The other key concept that I wish to incorporate is providing the viewer their own means to map routes through this data space by allowing them to search the narrative texts for the words or phrases they are interested in and displaying those results in a manner that visualizes the connectivity of that selection. This provides the viewer another degree of freedom so that they too have as much agency as I can provide.

This project will be not only an extension of my own photographic practice, but a forum through which participants can write their own autobiographical texts, and a website through which viewers can explore the commonalities of the participants and be inspired into a greater reverence for the connections we all share. It is my hope that such a project would appeal to both participant and viewer and that I am not alone in finding these things interesting.

 

 

Technical Description of the Project

The initial stage is choosing a set of subjects and obtaining images that situate them in their lives, their personalities, and their habitat. These photos become the central that secondary images and subject written narrative texts are associated with. The secondary images have complementary subject matter to the aesthetics and content of the main image. An example would be a main image that shows a subject working in their garden and supplementary images of plants (probably illustrations). One possibility is to associate a group of supplementary images with each photo and displaying only one at a time to increase the variation of experience or to associate the supplementary images with the written narratives to increase coherence.

Once a subject has been identified the process of obtaining photos involves several days of interviews and photography. None of the shots are intended to be headshot style images, rather I envision environmental portraits that show the subject interacting with the people places and things that are important to them. What these settings might be will be determined through the initial interview process as well as through what is termed “deep hanging out” an ethnography practice that allows the observer to experience the life of the subject in a more informal and less clinical manner.[9]

During these sessions it will be important for me to ascertain answers to the questions: how does the subject spend their free time, what obligations do they feel they have, who is involved in their life, is religion important to them, is family important, are friends important, what activities do they participate in, which ones do they wish they could, what do they strive for, and basically what is important to them? All this must be done very carefully so as not to be leading, at the same time it is important to try to unearth possible connections between their lives and those of the other subjects of this project without ignoring more important aspects of their lives and without steering them towards things they might otherwise dismiss. This is where the deep hanging out becomes so useful, extended time with the subject allows them to loosen up and not feel so on the spot.

These interviews will be recorded, primarily so that I’m not taking notes during them and thus turning them into a more structured and formal occasion. If the recording quality is good enough some of the sound clips may be used on the website as supplemental material, however I don’t want the spoken narrative to be in conflict with the text narratives they enter and I don’t want them to feel restricted to talking only about what they have already covered so in all likelihood those recordings will be for my personal use only.

Ideally I will obtain somewhere between ten to fifteen images of each subject, each one focusing on a different aspect of their life. While the web based versions of the images will need to be of lower quality, 72ppi, to limit their size and loading times, I would like the initial photos to be of high enough quality that useable prints could be made if a physical exhibition was desired.

The secondary stage of production is the creation of the interface that allows the subjects to log in and enter text about their images. Each image can have many texts associated with it (only one will be displayed at a time) but each text only gets associated with one image. At the same time the subject enters the text they are asked to list at least one and no more than five key words or phrases that they feel apply to this text. I feel a limit to the number of key words is necessary to make people choose only those they feel are highly relevant thus keeping the navigational structure meaningful. These key words or phrases will be used in a navigational feature providing one mode of connectivity between subjects. By allowing the subject to define these key words themselves, they define their own connections within the project space. Initial awareness of this capability will probably have little effect but I’m hoping that once the display stage is reached subjects will peruse each other’s images and be inspired by what they find there, and address similar issues in relation to their own images.

The next stage of production is the creation of a web interface, most likely a Macromedia Flash movie, which would allow users to navigate through the different subjects photos. At this stage navigation is still very limited and hierarchal, the possible routs are just the linear sequence of images separated by subject. Each image when displayed has a layout generated from one of its associated text and secondary images. There will be a variety of templates for the layout, the choice of which will depend upon the size and shape of the supplementary image and the length of the text being displayed. 

The penultimate stage of production requires an already populated data space where the subjects have entered numerous texts about each of their photos. This stage of production concerns creating new ways of navigation through the space based on the key words or concepts entered by the subjects. Navigation will be achieved in a similar way to the navigation used in "Mobile Cultures".[10]  Each display page will have different paths associated with it that can be choosen as points of departure. Due to the fact that the database will be continuously updated by the subjects these paths will not have set length or set order but will be generated anew each time the movie is loaded.

This navigational feature will probably not be displayed directly on the screen but rather accessible through a menu choice. This will take the form of a pop up menu where the first pull down shows the key words associated with the narrative and moving the mouse over a key word brings up another screen which displays the names of the other subjects who have narratives with those keywords. Clicking on one of their names would take you directly to that narrative and its associated image.

I feel it is inappropriate to display the names in a linear fashion as that would imply an existing order. If it becomes necessary to do this I would use entry date as the order but I would rather develop a method of display that is nonlinear but yet still stresses the connection. Possibly a display method similar to that used in They Rule 2004[11] with the key word in the center and the subjects linked to it distributed in a circle around the word with lines linking them to it. A modification of the They Rule 2004 interface that allows the user to manipulate the display of key words and the subjects connected to them might provide a nice visualization but I feel this then stresses the group dynamics at cost of the individual narratives.  In any case this navigational element would display a rhizomatic set of connections between the subjects.

The ultimate stage of production involves the inclusion of navigation option that allows users to enter their own search terms thus allowing them to create their own paths through the data space. This query would be aimed at the main text field and not the key words. There would also be a submission process for terms that viewers thought brought up interesting results. These suggestions would only be displayed on the main entry page, possibly with a voting system in place to eliminate bad suggestions. The actual usefulness of this feature would depend on the size and diversity of the subject group and the willingness of viewers to experiment.

             

References:

Bal Mieke, "Light Writing: Portraiture in a Post-Traumatic Age," Mosaic (Winnipeg) 37.4 (2004), Questia,  Mar. 2006 <http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5008460105>.

 

Barthes, Roland, Camera Lucinda: Reflections on Photography, (New York: Hill and Wang,

1981)

 

Bell, Genevieve, Thumb culture: Social trends and mobile phone use, (Bielefeld, 2005)

 

Hayles, N. Katherine, Narrating Bits: Encounters between Humans and Intelligent Machines, Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, <March 18, 2006>

 

Lloyd, David, “Mobile Cultures” Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, http://www.vectorsjournal.org/index.php?page=7&projectId=54 <March 18, 2006>

 

Lury, Celia, Prosthetic Culture: Photography, Memory and Identity (London: Routledge, 1998), Questia, 7 Mar. 2006 <http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=103051814>

 

On, Josh, They Rule 2004, http://www.theyrule.net <March 18, 2006>

Rugg, Linda Haverty, Photography and Autobiography Photography and Autobiography (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997) 4, Questia, 16 Mar. 2006 <http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99323466>.

 

Sontag, Susan, On Photography (New York: Dell Publishing, 1977)