The Human Condition is something that is inbuilt within the species. We are obsessed with looking at other humans, and photographers continually create and recreate images for people to look at to feed the habit. Oscar Wild famously said, "It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or Tedious". How those same people are captured on camera will either tell their story or show their character to the world or not. Susan Sontag says, "A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence. Like a wood fire in a room, photographs- especially those of people, of distant landscapes and faraway cities, of the vanished past- are incitements to reverie.." The idea that a photograph can both show something that is no longer present, but can also show something that is not visible leads to a magical means of storytelling, far beyond the normal stream of imagination. In this self portrait, I have used under lighting, and a reflector to highlight the face, using one tungsten studio light at a 45 degree angle, no flash. The fact that I am barely visible speaks volumes to my audience, more than the whole of my face could, and my chosen props convey an austere front behind which I am perhaps trapped. The emotion which I felt was one of frustration.
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