I took several hundred self-portraits with the Polaroid One-Step SX-70 camera in 1978. The artists whose work at the time captivated me were Lucas Samaras, Egon Schiele, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. To document my life as a 21-year-old queer art punk, I used the Polaroid, multiple journals and performance. I posed, like any good punk, to put you off and to attract you just the same; its all the same.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Barthes on portraiture, sort of
"The portrait-photograph is a closed field of forces. Four image-repertoires intersect here, oppose and distort each other. In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art. In other words, a strange action: I do not stop imitating myself, and because of this, each time I am (or let myself be) photographed, I invariably suffer from a sensation of inauthenticity, sometimes of imposture (comparable to certain nightmares). In terms of image-repertoire, the Photograph (the one I intend) represents that very subtle moment when, to tell the truth, I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object: I then experience a micro-version of death (of parenthesis): I am truly becoming a specter."
pgs. 13-14, translated by R. Howard
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