Reflecting on reflections

I had thought that my interest in reflective self portraiture was a recent thing but it would appear not.

The other day I noticed a picture stuck in the mirror on the mantlepiece that I see every day. I have become so used to its presence that I never really give it a second thought (a bit like oneself), although sometimes I pause to reflect upon the moment in time it was taken. The image holds a happy memory; I can feel the sun on my back and the smell of the island and my heart beating as I watch my firstborn laugh at me through the glass. I am whole and I have embodied the moment in the image.

I also find myself casting my mind back to being ten years old and watching a photographer friend of my mothers taking a reflective shot into the sitting room window of our terraced house. He looks into the glass and sees himself and through the glass he captures my brother holding a hoover hose. He looks complete as he takes this image.

He gave us a copy of the photograph once he'd developed the film and I remember thinking it was the best photo I had ever seen.

Is taking a self portrait about being involved, about embodiment, about personal reflection, about examination or feeling somehow complete. Or is it about seeing or giving a bit more. Or is it about self obsession or, worse still, narcissism.


This is what my Dad wrote to me recently on the subject.

I'm not sure about these self-reflected images of yours despite their artistry: are we looking into the deeper aspects of Alice or is Alice simply using herself as an image to be played with? An old friend of mine had a real down on mirrors and was emphatic about children being kept away from them, suggesting that mirrors made kids narcissistic and uncompromisingly self-centred (he should know - he became a self-centred narcissist himself).

Maybe it's actually very simple. Maybe it's because i've always lived with people who don't really take photographs and i've naturally adapted to my circumstances.

Maybe.


I think the heat has got to me.



Here are a some very interesting, and quite funny, words on the subject.

Objective & Subjective.

Ongoing self portraits.