A reflection on my relationship to photography, being looked at; and how Dimitri Shostakovich and Earnest Hemingway helped me find my way around this.
My first photo shoot was when I was around 12/13. I had just won my school pageant and was preparing for my next. Jump a few weeks to my next pageant—and I didn’t win. They handed out feedback sheets that gave us our score on our walk, our outfits, overall presentation, and my least favorite, our beauty. It is one thing to give me feedback on my clothing and my walk because those are things I can change. From what I remember that competition was about 50% white women and then the other 50% was made up of colored[1], Indian, and black women. Looking down at that score card and seeing my natural beauty being graded and then looking around me and seeing that most of the women who were competing where white was the clearest, and perhaps most impactful signal that regardless of how beautiful I think I am, I am never going to be as beautiful as a blond-haired Ashley. And to be fair to our blond-haired Ashley, she probably had to dye her hair blond because her whiteness does not exempt her from the comparative scrutiny that all women are subject to.
That score card was probably the moment that I completely wanted to disinvest myself in feeling beautiful. On the one hand, I think it’s healthy for a tween girl to turn to everything except how she looks to try and find herself. And at the same time, I missed the chance to see myself from outside of myself.
Photo Shoot Inspiration:
My original concept idea was to try and photograph myself as “smart.” My reference photographs were Dimitri Shostakovich and Earnest Hemingway. Shostakovich rests his head on his hand as he leans on the piano as if to say that the weight of his mind is too much for his neck to bear alone. His support is not his hand—it is the piano. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I am a huge fan of this man’s work, and you should listen to The Execution of Stephen Razin and experience him in all his glory! I loved the idea of conveying a heaviness of mind. At some point, I want to create a photograph where I lean my head on my hand and my body on a bookcase. Just as the piano was Shostakovich’s longest companion, books have been my longest and most intimate companions.
Although Hemingway is a decorated writer, I have only read his Old Man and The Sea, and I was dead bored. I appreciate him far more as a photographic subject than as a writer. Personally, I think Hemingway is an incredibly attractive man—but because he is completely covered up, we are not meant to look at him in a sensual manner. We are meant to look at him as an intellectual. I enjoy this image because of how his turtleneck frames his face. It naturally draws our eyes to his face, his head, the center of intellectual production. The contrast between his dark sweater, the dark background and his well-lit face is another way that the viewer is directed to his mind. Finally, his pensive stare makes me as a viewer wonder what he thinks about. Of course, one can read his words to find out what occupied his mind. But I find myself wondering about his throwaway thoughts— the thoughts we have all the time but think that no one would really care. I wanted to try and convey the same sort of feeling but I feel like you need a healthy number of wrinkles to be able to fully pull off the pensive look.
I certainly got my “I'm a smart person” photographs. Of course, the curly hair gives the images a flirtatious feel—but when I see these photographs, I see images of my mind literally being the biggest part of who I am. I don’t feel like I am being marked against blond Ashley. These photos make me feel like I am shining from the inside out.
I wouldn’t have been able to see myself this way if it weren’t for More Than Words Photography.
[1] For my non-South African readers: colored is not a derogatory word. It describes a racial group