Look at Us

My first day of col­lege I walked in to French 301 to see Camille Manette at the front of the room. French, beau­ti­ful. She promptly changed her sched­ule and dis­ap­peared to another class, another 301. So…I changed my entire gig to be sit­ting there in her class now at 11am instead of 8am. Appar­ently nei­ther of us liked the early morn­ing. Smit­ten in the very best freshman-in-college way, I vowed to know her. And actu­ally, we did become friends in a way. I found myself soak­ing up every­thing I could from her about the psy­chol­ogy of lit­er­a­ture, what it means to learn another lan­guage, which I did not do. Over the course of the year we spent a fair amount of time together out­side of class. Of course she had a seri­ous boyfriend. I didn’t care. I was ok with prox­im­ity, like a grenade. I was sure if I could just be close that my testos­terone bomb explod­ing every day would bring her down. It didn’t. Her sis­ter showed up from Paris. I com­pletely lost my mind when we went to Bar­ton Springs pool and they went swim­ming, dressed Frenchly top­less, appar­ently obliv­i­ous to my pain/desire/etc. I wanted to fit in, be cool, be non­cha­lant. Couldn’t then, but I learned a lot. Peo­ple from France dress dif­fer­ent when they swim, for instance. I need to be able to deal with that, for instance. This story is not the point of my story today, how­ever, except that this story is about our obses­sion with our­selves, auto-voyeurism, and the art and prac­tice of looking.

In French 301, we read Satre’s Huis Clos, (No Way Out). It is an exis­ten­tial­ist man­i­festo about three char­ac­ters stuck in hell, which is a room in which hell even­tu­ally is defined as the oth­ers in the room. Even when the door is open they won’t leave. They each have no way to see them­selves except as they are described by the oth­ers. Leav­ing, dis­ap­pear­ing from that def­i­n­i­tion is worse than stay­ing, which is pretty bad. There are no mir­rors. We are defined by those around us and so we can’t know who we really are with or with­out them. Besides Chris­tine, the play had a big impact on me, espe­cially since we read it in the French and I had to strug­gle with every line. The slow­ness of the read­ing allowed the hor­rors of this hell to so slowly unfold that they became a part of me in a way. Can I know myself with­out you? Can I please have an accu­rate mir­ror? Can I stop this con­stant con­ver­sa­tion, this get­ting to know you, this river of words, and just know?!

If you go to Flickr and browse around the mil­lions of pho­tos there are end­less sets and whole accounts devoted to the self por­trait. Beau­ti­ful women enrap­tured with them­selves, despon­dent young men shoot­ing in to mir­rors, their black hair spik­ing down their faces. The most pop­u­lar pho­tog­ra­pher on Flickr is Rebekka, a remark­able artist. The photo that got her there is a self por­trait of her and a mid-air apple. You can see it here: http://​www​.flickr​.com/​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​r​e​b​b​a​/​3​2​2​9​6​282. She looks like a non­cha­lant Eve, the bal­ance of the world’s eter­nal sal­va­tion, float­ing in front of her angelic, but crafty face.

There is a whole world of peo­ple who are won­der­ing what they look like. I am one of them. I rarely look in a mir­ror but I am dying to know what you think of me. All these images of our­selves, our fish­ing lines to hook you, so you have to be reeled in and then you will tell me who I am. I will be seen and then I will be known. At least it is a strat­egy, some­thing to get con­nected. At the same time it feels good it also hurts a lit­tle, every time, the know­ing that its really not being known, the deep down desire, need, yearn­ing. It’s either hope­less or its our sal­va­tion, the yearning.

This month at the Brook­lyn Museum there is a new show. Andy Warhol: The Last Decade depicts sev­eral self por­traits. Most of these are described as vacant or somber, which is the typ­i­cal descrip­tion of the self por­traits (http://​www​.stu​dio​-inter​na​tional​.co​.uk/​p​a​i​n​t​i​n​g​/​w​a​r​h​o​l​_​4​_​0​5​.​asp). Of course all his self-portraits are of the same man, but they often show the same expres­sion as well. They are like the holo­graph that switches from empty to deep at the same time. One reviewer writes the images are say­ing: ”Look at me, look at me! Stop star­ing, stop star­ing.” That is about right. Warhol knew we would all be look­ing at our­selves a lot. In the 60’s when he was work­ing, the world was turn­ing pop, try­ing to stay asleep, find­ing some amaz­ing tools to play with, and dig­ging the self absorp­tion. He wanted to see who he was in that. His art may seem sim­ple, con­trived, easy, but I think he was look­ing into the future, into Flickr, into the mil­lions of us look­ing around and click­ing, point­ing, shoot­ing. I like him now and I have always liked him and his soup cans.

I love this image of Warhol because his eyes are closed. In most of his por­traits he has the vacant, bored, implor­ing stare. This Andy seems to be at peace. Sleep­ing or maybe even passed on. And next to him, this amaz­ing, gor­geous por­trait of Fran­coise Sagan, asleep at the wheel of the phal­lic fender. All so great and human.

Bend OR, 2010, Nikon D700, nat­ural light.

Photo cred­its: Hel­mut New­ton, SUMO (2009), Fran­coise Sagan, 1963; Andy Warhol, Vogue Uomo, 1974