Photography and Who We Are

"Photography is fundamental to the ways we define and understand who we are" (Heiferman 2012:17). Photography also has naturally crossed boundaries from the beginning, "free of historical limits," (Bate 2016). 

Imagery is a universal language, though translations vary with the diverseness of human existence. 

 Fig. 1: Slade 2020

In 'week 1' of my very first module (Positions and Practice) we were introduced to the analogy that photographs can be a window or a mirror.  Some of the very first photographic images ever created contained windows.  

Fig. 2: Slade 2020

In these images we gaze at the 'bear' or other objects gazing out, even as we, the viewer, 'gaze' in.  Both of us separated by two layers of glass, the pane of the window, and the camera lens itself. Reflections also fill the windows with glimpses of the outside world, creating a hint of the subject's actual gaze, and a secondary path for our gaze as the viewers.   

Fig. 3: Image donated to the project by Jeanette Holmes, Rexburg Idaho, USA. 

The Teddy Bear Project of COVID-19 2020.

Occasionally in the reflection there also contains the camera and photographer behind it- increasing the amount of gazes, as we look at them, looking at the bears, who are looking out at the world, and seemingly at us.  

Roland Barthes observed "The more technology develops the diffusion of information... the more it provides the means of masking the constructed meaning under the appearance of the given image" (Barthes in Heiferman 2012:15)

We are left wondering if the owners view any 'constructed meaning' behind these images of their bears.  And when they look back on the images in the distant future, will they construct the meaning differently than in the moment.  Will they perhaps see themselves, or their loved ones, gazing out from behind the glass?  

BATE, David. 2016. 'Global Photography.' Photography: The Key Concepts in Photography. London; Bloomsbury Academic.


HEIFERMAN, Marvin. 2012. Photography Changes Everything. New York; Washington, D. C.: Aperture.