A Profile Of Norwin Gonzales
Norwin Gonzales
Facebook is awash with images. For one reason or another, it is social centrale, the crux of private and now even market networks across the world. It is the current social medium of choice and has inched out several competitors that were also platforms for images such as MySpace, Friendster, Multiply, and a variety of blogs and other image-hosting sites. And because of its wide reach and ability to build bridges across continents and through cultural barriers, Facebook has become a prime and necessary exhibition space for any sort of visual work, professional or amateur, unusual or banal, painting, graphic design, doodle/sketch, photograph, or other. Infographiclabs, a data collection-and-transformation group, notes that, on average, 250 million photos are uploaded to the social networking site daily.[1] And of the multiple categories of photographs being uploaded, one of the most regarded ones is the Profile Picture.
Norwin Gonzales is a student at the University of the Philippines and one of the billions of Facebook member-users. The original image of his face against a grassy backdrop is 12.8x8.56 inches but because of the limitations of a browser window as well as the screen of a common laptop or PC, it measures around 9�x6�. But this is merely the simplest transformation; as will be later on, the extent of tampering allowed by an uploader to Facebook is far and does much more to the photograph than meets the scrolling mind. First though, an understanding of the image at its most basic must be had in order to be able to analyze the true effects of profile pictures to the image-viewer relationship. The source photo is a black and white image of a man with glasses and a scruffy beard with a background of grass, trees, and benches, possibly a park. Because there are hardly any cameras out there today made to produce only a B&W photo, it can be assumed that a filter of some sort is used to give of the effect. The filter applied has also caused the photograph to be grainy. The rough texture is not the type to come from a low-end digital camera because it does not blur the figure nor exclude
detail. In fact, the image is so high in quality that the very strands of the hair of his beard can actually be seen. Instead, the image is very slightly dissipated by way of small gray, black, and white specks that remove the solidity of the image. The image, especially everything behind Norwin is softened. The softer image is coupled with the B&W effect used to produce a very solemn and quiet picture. His positioning in the picture adds to the somber, thoughtful atmosphere, set and taken in time but now apart from it entirely. The thing itself, his head is centered at the middle looking downward. The line of sight goes beyond the picture, down into an unknown spot beyond the photo and onto an object or space. There is no horizontal line because the vantage point used captures the image from above. And all that can be used to frame and bound the shot at the back are disoriented lines: benches point from left to right, slightly leaning upwards while tree trunks and roots are sprawled downwards. In all, a Szarkowski-esque analysis of the photos formal elements are shared to form the figure of a mindful Norwin is floating against a sea of lines streamed towards nowhere in particular.[2] The practice of a profile picture harkens itself back to portraiture in painting and sculpture. It was a practice where the subject, usually a sponsor/patron or a man in a position of political or economic power would pose in front of an artist who will translate, often the upper body or head of the figure onto a canvas or into a bust to be presented to different circles of friends.[3] Surrounding the subject will be objects of interest and wealth to convey a certain characterization of his, a profile. Today, the profile picture is used in much the same manner, to convey a facet of a person’s life to friends and to the public. Its studium (in Barthes’ terms) is portraiture.[4] In this case, it is Norwin wanting to portray himself as a thinking-type of person. Despite the image no longer being only about far-reaching influence and wealth, its location in art history keeps within the practice of its predecessor. The picture has become a matter of identity. But the scale in which it is presented and encountered radically changes a viewer’s treatment of the picture. It has been radically resized into what is called a thumbnail, literally the size of the nail of one’s thumb. Rescaling from almost 13”x9” to 9”x6” and then again to .76”x.76”, a picture is left less than an inch in dimensions and hardly recognizable.
The picture, for the sake of space-saving, is distorted to the point of detail removal. Only an impression of the figure, of the identifying element of the owner of the account remains. If portraiture was its studium, the unconventional smack of the lips is its punctum. Is he caught in the middle of pronouncing the letter m, is he imitating a toothless person? The mystery of the comical act sort of conflicts with the rest of the image’s solemnity and makes the picture notable. But the resizing of an image renders this lipsmack to be unrecognizable. One may even confuse it with a wide smile. Imagine all that comical tension turned into a simple grin, just like a lot of other profile pictures. The strangeness is lost entirely; the meaning of the photo has changed. And everyone who will not bother to open the picture, instead see it on their feed or beside a comment will not see the technical work of the photo, the details, nor its peculiarity. The scaling that Facebook must do, and which the uploader has agreed to, is a violent act of meaningconversion, even removal. It is a stripping away of detail, particular facial features, nuances and idiosyncrasies. The profile picture, which functions as online signifier to one’s identity in physical space may even destroy identity because of the way it is presented. The term has a synonym, Headshot: ainhuman bullet straight through the head, an image so vicious because it is, plain and simple, a killing.
(Rupert IV A. Bustamante) Image Sources: Photo by C.D. http://sphotos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/46856_10200542615751892_1971700431_n.jpg http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-akprn1/c28.6.75.75/s57x57/46856_10200542615751892_1971700431_s.jpg Sources: [1] Hodgson, Lucy. Facebook 2012 [Inforgraphic]. Infographic. 15 Feb 2012. The Blog Herald. 07 Feb 2013. <http://www.blogherald.com/2012/02/15/facebook-2012-infographic/> [2] Szarkowski, John. The Photographer's Eye. Readings. Jerry Nevins. 07 Feb 2013. <http://jnevins.com/szarkowskireading.htm> [3] Markopoulioti, Eleni. A Bried History of Portraiture. Fabulous Noble. 07 Feb 2013. <http://fabulousnoble.com/a-brief-history-of-portraiture/> [4] Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. NY, USA: Hill and Wang, 1982.