INDECEPTION

The world does not get to define me, it can only respond to my creation of self. But who am I, really, and how much am I willing to expose once I confront my own inherent flaws, fears, and fixations? Can I forgo all the pandering and the posturing expected of women, in and beyond social media, and abstain from all those irresistible, inevitable filters?

The self-portrait, once a sacred ritual in every artist’s oeuvre, has long since been co-opted by pop culture and camera phones. Yet, while we’re so much more than a tiny icon on a glowing screen, full of unexpected strangeness and beauty, a modern life — and a viable career in the arts — includes a virtual machine fueled by an algorithm that favors the face.

In the midst of a Tom Hanks / Wilson moment, I defiantly captured a castaway photo in the bathroom of a casita that I rented for a solitary month in the desert. My first accidental portrait, “as the wilderness,” was during a period when I desperately needed to know who I was all alone, left to my own devices, suspended in a social vacuum with no one to influence and nothing to resist. 

What began as snide cynicism about the vapid navel-gazing of social media humbled me time and again. The series stuck and, like those original artists, mirror time intentionally opposed vanity. I devised rules: stand straight, no posing or posturing, interrupt face with phone, add witty description to further obfuscate "the gaze."