A few weeks back, in my High School Journalism Workshop, I had a student who made images that inspire me to think more carefully about how young people see the world differently than I do. In particular, I think young photographers have a different perspective on how we should consider the relationships we have with our subjects.
Atiana's images are complex because they speak to something that often is ignored or underestimated in the discourse about the role of photography and society. Atiana's images seem to confront, honestly and naturally, the role of "self" in the picture making process.
There is no escaping the reading of this picture (above) as an image of a child's quirky expression. However, this is also a self-portrait of Atiana with her family.
The layering and juxtaposition of "self" against a tightly composed frame of the "other" makes me think how much of the photographer comes out in the image -- visible or invisible.
In fact, every image we make has as much to do with our own sense of place in the world -- our own sense of "self" -- as it does with the subjects we choose to capture.
Interestingly, much of what we consider the "best" photography seems to attempt to avoid any overt display of conscious of "self" in the process of constructing an image. There is this feeling that the subject must be somehow "out there" and not "in here" -- referring to how the camera tries to act as an omniscient eye on the world. The camera is often used as a tool to distance ourselves from the reality we are trying to capture. The emotions we desperately attempt to convey are therefore not our own but those of the subject, victim, or object of desire.
When young people are learning to make images, it is clear that there is a lot more sense of self in the pictures than when compared to someone who has been around a while.
The young look to photography as an exploration of who they are in the world -- they have yet to comprehend fully the aesthetics how the outside world is formally framed by the conventions of art and culture. What we get to see, then, is a rare and refreshing perspective of the photographer as who they are in relationship to their environments and experiences. What we get to see is a reflection, in this case literally, of the photographer as interloper and trespasser on time -- the stealing of moments and the capturing of fleeting whimsy. At the same time, we also get the sense that the picture also speaks directly to the discovery of "self" in an innocent and refreshing way.