Lola Ade: gorgeous. and i texted you!!
10 hours ago · Like
David PaperBoy Brown: Miss u!
9 hours ago · Like
Michael 'Goke Omidiran: My superstar niece. Love ya...
2 hours ago · Like
I hope no one rotates this or my nose will look bigger.
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This picture isn't for you; it's for him.
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Safder Abbas: nice
September 10, 2012 at 12:16pm · Like
Omer Mirza: Creepy. Good job though!
Seprember 10, 2012 at 1:50pm · Like
September 10, 2012 at 12:16pm · Like
Omer Mirza: Creepy. Good job though!
Seprember 10, 2012 at 1:50pm · Like
Salman Raza: dude that is cool!
Seprember 10, 2012 at 3:40pm · Like
Seprember 10, 2012 at 3:40pm · Like
Saba Bilwani: wowww
Seprember 10, 2012 at 6:11pm · Like
Seprember 10, 2012 at 6:11pm · Like
Do I look tortured? As long as she thinks so.
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Oh, oops. My life is actually perfect.
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I am an idiot.
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I'm still glad my tagged pictures are private.
If you have a Facebook, I encourage you to look through your profile pictures. On what basis did you choose these images? Was there something you wanted that guy or girl you hooked up with the other night, and promptly friend requested the next morning, to see? Are you attempting to look professional for an employer or people you accidentally accepted as friends and feel awkward deleting? Is your goal to show off your happy family or a job you pretend to like? Do you think you look extra pretty or handsome is these pictures? Do you even look like yourself?
Now, look at your tagged pictures. Did you choose to leave your tagged photos public for the lucky individuals who you accepted as friends...or are they restricted to yourself? Are there a select (even luckier few?) who are allowed to view these photos at their leisure while others are not? Is there a single individual (basically an overall deprived soul) who is blocked from seeing anything at all? How many candid shots can you find of yourself? Did you untag those because they were embarrassing? Did you leave a few tagged because fortunately you don't look so bad in those ones?
Regardless of whether or not you're a relatively self actualized person, I'm sure you recognized a disconnect between the two collections of photographs. The images presented above are arranged to show this disconnect; so, when you first viewed my essay, you found very little linearity - but that's the point. After discussing the ambiguity of a photograph in class and considering the different perspectives of the photographer, subject and viewer, I realized that this ambiguity is the most disconcerting thing about having images published on social media websites. How many of us wonder, as subjects, how the image appears to other viewers? And, how relevant is the actual photographer in any of these images?
My photographic essay is plagiarized in the sense that I stole from the widest published source of photographic essays available today: Facebook. The name of the social media site, itself, indicates that its appeal lies in providing a virtual community containing both images and comments. We can all agree that it is common for many people to eagerly display their lives all over the internet and I'm sure we can theorize for ages over the incentives that exist for "face booking" with images. However, before this essay comes off as a criticism of others, I want to be clear that it is foremost a criticism of myself.
The first, third and fifth photographs are all profile pictures, the latter being mine and the first two being from random "friends" I stalked for this assignment. The second, fourth and sixth images are all tagged pictures belonging to the same person presented in the profile picture before it. Though the three of us are not friends outside of the virtual world of Facebook, and though we have barely said more than three sentences to one another, our profile pictures contain several similarities. 1. We all chose to edit the color tone to black and white, 2. We each added a completely unnatural aspect to our photos - the first girl rotated her image sideways, the boy added a supernatural transparency and I chose to add a frame that serves whatever purpose a frame is meant to serve. However, when looking at the tagged counterparts, we are nothing like the presentation we project in our profile pictures. The girl isn't always sideways, the guy is not so tormented and I am not as composed as I wish I was.
But I didn't want the almond cake- This sequence consists of birthdays, friends, family, and aging. It also contains a few highly edited images. I see the mixture of these things highlighting people's wants and desires conflicting with what is really in front of them.
ReplyDeleteWorld Upended. I read Sana's essay as a longing for what has been broken or lost. The side-ways post feels as if things are off kilter---up-ended---things are not as they should be. The two cropped photo's make me think of absence and what the shadows and the darkness dare to hide. The frame surrounding those photos further minimizes the moment..making that fraction of a second smaller and smaller. But life goes on despite upheaval. Birthdays and celebrations continue regardless of the empty spaces and sometimes the best we can do is hold our weary head in the palm of our hand.
ReplyDeleteAll the pictures have a familial quality, whether it is among friends or actual relatives/siblings. There appears to be people of different ages, as if highlighting how life moves on and how things can never stay the same. Each photo is just an isolated moment in time that can never happen again. At first glance the ghost-like photo seems like the outlier, but it fits in the context of the other photos because it demonstrates how not even death can conquer the unions of friendship and family.
ReplyDeleteA Dream. This essay has a transient quality about it that is hard to put into words. The photo of the boy in the bed is especially ghost like. The alternation from color to black and white photos serves to reinforce this concept.
ReplyDeleteThese photos portray how we define ourselves through our relationships with others. The social interactions can be sorrowful (sorrow is the first sense I get from the ghost-like picture of the bed) as well as unnerving (which I see from the placement of the very first photo). However, in the end it is our interactions with others which make who we are.
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say, the first, third, and fifth photos are eye-catchers, punctuating the family festivities with a ghost story. I am curious if there is an intended sequence in the layout of the essay. Sana has alternated images of celebration and shadow...is this merely an aesthetic choice of color, or is there a more complicated narrative (or narratives) underneath. I am inclined to suspect the latter, because some of these photos do follow a discernible order. Such is the case of the second and sixth photos; one features a cake, the other...an empty plate.
ReplyDeleteI'm so confused, in this way I'm really enjoying--by the third picture. I can't see how it connects to the other images and I was really hoping for an explanation later in the essay, and that affected my reading of the proceeding images. Looking back at it after finishing the essay, it reads as a sense of loss, someone missing from the celebration, and I think hearkens back to the idea of a photograph implying the death of its subject.
ReplyDelete7 people like this.
ReplyDeleteLola Ade: gorgeous. and i texted you!!
10 hours ago · Like
David PaperBoy Brown: Miss u!
9 hours ago · Like
Michael 'Goke Omidiran: My superstar niece. Love ya...
2 hours ago · Like
This essay feels like a personal documentation of one's life, with the immediacy and ease of the facebook timeline, which themselves are fascinating photo essays.
ReplyDeleteDefined-I agree with Sam that these photos capture the feel of everyday life. We have the unexpected, candid moments how we really are or the highly polished, edited moments of how we want to present ourselves. For me, the "ghost" photo is less haunting and more of the a depiction of an intrapersonal moment immediately after the eyes open to start the day.
ReplyDelete1 person likes this.
ReplyDeleteThe added text provides a much needed explanation but for someone uninitiated into the world of Facebook, like the original essay minus the words, it is kind of mystifying. Indeed, the whole thing reads like a poem. I wonder if some more explanation, a meta-explanation of facebook and photographs, or facebook in general and what it would be like without photographs is necessary?
ReplyDelete