Writing, Research & Technology Photo Essay: Beauty & Self Image By: Jewels Grasso
Introduction: Self Image and Beauty—photographs of different ages of females demonstrate that beauty is concealed behind make up and emotion. Angela Kelly’s reading, “Self Image” gave me some insight as to what I was hoping to capture with my pictures and that was “expressing one’s self.” I wanted to capture pictures that had a deeper meaning behind them, other than what’s actually there. I wanted to steer away from what is expected of women when people see them in photographs, because women are perceived to be feminine and carry a type of composure that is more graceful than that of a male. However, there are moments in photos that I was able to capture when my subjects would sport the “male associated feelings” as Kelly states, and to see women photographed like this in such gestures is an unusual beauty within their self image. The representation of one’s self reveals the bare truth and most of the time women cover up their image (or the bare truth), because it’s something they don’t want to know or even accept for themselves, because of their perspective of how they see themselves. Some photos illustrate what women will do to live up to society’s expectations to maintain a beautiful self image for themselves. While photographing my subjects I found it to be extremely challenging to capture the deeper meaning of what is not actually there in the photograph unless we look deeper into the eyes of the subjects. Fred Ritchen explains, “Subjects may not like the ways in which they are being represented and can challenge the photographer…” (126). Similarly, the reason as to why the photo essay was such a challenge is because whenever I wanted to capture an image of my subjects, many of them would start acting or continue to keep doing what they thought they were doing, but came off more estrange, or separated themselves from what they were doing in their moment of solitude. Some subjects would try to make sure
they looked “decent” for the camera and the public, because they didn’t feel like they would look pretty enough for the camera. I wanted to prove them wrong.
Rhetoric and Aesthetic: This photo essay is captured with my Galaxy SIII camera phone in black and white. I chose my camera phone mostly because of convenience, but also because I felt like it would be more time consuming to buy a disposable camera, take it to be developed and later when all is said and done, to scan the pictures for this project. The decided to do the photo’s in black and white because I felt as though they would relay a deeper meaning because they are in different shades of grey, opposed to being in color since most of us live life in color anyway it would just appear all the same. With a lot of the pictures I have either blurred the edges or I applied vignette to try to intensify the vibe or enlighten the subject’s surroundings. For example, the fourth picture is of a woman in a hardware store, sitting on a metal step ladder. I applied vignette to the picture to try to create a feeling that she is somewhere that beauty might not be found in her case, because she’s working in a hardware store. However, I tried to apply the rule of thirds as well as the diagonal rule, where all of the lines surrounding her (lights, ladder post, things on the shelves and even herself in the direction she is looking) all are pointing in the same direction. But, I tried to capture the photo in a certain light so that her face wasn’t so dark, yet it is looking downwards, showing that she is still shown in the light, so her beauty is seen from the back light. An example of pictures where the photo is blurred on the edges can be seen in picture nine. This picture is of two little girls looking down at a scale in their bathroom. The one little girl is on the scale, while the other girl is standing next to her looking down with her. I thought this picture was interesting to capture because for their ages I could only imagine that by looking at the scale was for curiosity. However, in another perspective I thought about how females have complex about their body image when they become older because they go through the young adult stage and either they grow out of it or they don’t. So, looking at this photo reminds me of that stage in life when females
feel awkward about their body and keep looking down at numbers to calculate how they feel on the outside about their beauty, so capturing an image like this makes me want to create a moment for viewers to imagine what if body image was looked at in this way at such a young age. I also tend to think that the blur to this photo is almost like a foggy mirror in the bathroom. Other photo’s that appear interesting in my photo essay are photos number five and seven because of the effects applied to the pictures. With picture number five, the photo of a girl looking at a tanning bed shows her body pointing in the direction of the bed without showing any emotion on her face. However, the tanning bed itself is well lit, which shows the bulbs in the bed, and yet we’re all aware of the dangers that they can inflict on the human body. I tried to edit this photo so that it’s almost like the girl is off balance, where we see her multiple times, and by doing this I used the holgaart feature. I thought that by doing this it wouldn’t really show beauty, but what girls do for their appearance and to enhance their self image in order to feel beautiful. Picture number seven is different because of the lighting that I was able to capture with my subjects and how I applied the vignette. I think that the both of them in the picture balance themselves out on opposite sides of the picture with the sheer whiteness in between the two of them. Rule of thirds is taking place in the picture as well, where the woman on the left side is the main focus. Something about this picture is different from all the other ones I have taken, but I’m not quite sure as to what it is…quite possibly her natural beauty and the fact that the lightening in the background makes it appear like it was set up that way intentionally. With all of the pictures I used the website www.befunky.com to edit the pictures and to enhance the different effects to make them what they are. I felt as though this project was difficult for me, where I’d rather do the mashup three more times than this again. I thought it was challenging to find what I was looking for, which was beauty that was nearly hidden, because there are so many people who aren’t for taking pictures without
prepping themselves ahead of time, which include people who I know besides for strangers that I had asked permission beforehand to go ahead and incorporate them into this essay.
Photo Analysis: Kelly’s reading is unique by the way she defines the differences between self expression and self portraiture and the ability to connect them to self image. According to Kelly she writes “self-portrait is that the artist/photographer makes an image purporting to reveal the ‘inner’ character of the sitter as opposed to a likeness,” she continues, “…the position of the ‘self-expressive individual artist’ is an ironic one at critically examining a concept of self in a wider social context is treated as self indulgence” (411). My photo essay is designed to replicate these theories and to explain how the photographs resemble beauty in a brighter light, than those who would see the subjects in photo’s another way. The photograph to the left may look like a woman who isn’t dressed to impress or all put together by the way the strands of hair hang in front of her face, or the fact that she doesn’t have dramatic makeup on. However, the photograph’s shades of grey
exemplify the naturalness of women, much of which society needs to see more of in order to gain a better insight to what beauty is, instead of posing for the camera and critically examining themselves to see what they see is suitable to the public eye. There are lines within this photo that draw the viewer to the key focal point of the subject, which are positioned around her face. The lines define her age and represent her wrinkles, but looking deeper we can see that they illustrate happy wrinkles, because she is smiling. The way the woman has her body slanted on a diagonal, allows us to direct our eyes at the most important elements of her. These lines and the diagonal posture in the way she is standing enhances the photo’s composition, because they draw the viewer’s eyes to the self-portrait of the woman’s inner character. The rule of thirds plays another important photo composition, because it directs our eyes to what the woman is concentrating on doing, which is baking. We can also see that the rule of thirds provides some balance in the way the woman is standing. One thing about this photo is that the woman did not want to be photographed, but after much conversing she granted me the approval to take the picture. Very rarely do women want to be photographed without any makeup on, because they hear and see things in the media as to what is socially acceptable, so they pose themselves as human beings that are always dressed to the nines or presentable. Kelly makes an important statement when she says “We may look in the mirror only to check our appearance, not to see through it,” (411). I think this stands true for a large percentage for young adults and adults, because women constantly beat themselves up over their appearance and what they want to amount to, instead of realizing what they already have become. Their self image already portrays the many roles as a woman and how family and friends see them, but they need to come to the realization that without makeup they’re beautiful since they display a natural appearance instead of one that is concealed with makeup.
Works Cited Kelly, A. (1979, 2003). Self Image. In A. Wells (Ed.), The Photography Reader (pp. 410 – 416). New York, NY: Routledge. Ritchin, F. (2009). The Social Photograph. After Photography (pp. 125 – 139). New York, NY: WW Norton & Company.