Self: I as image essay

Raquel Mendieta
Prof. Cacoilo
Self: I as image
20 April 2017

Inspired by Ana Mendieta 

             Images alone are something that has become part of our everyday society. We use it as proof for something of what it should look like. The pyramids look like the way they do because that is how you've seen the image of it. An image of one's self especially becomes proof of your own identity. On social media we post pictures of what we want people to see us as otherwise we wouldn't post it. What's ridiculous is that we don't even look like the person in the photo. The skin smoothing filter that slims your face and nose is what we would all like to walk around looking like, but we can't. We use images to hold a memory that can last forever and it becomes a product we can touch and feel. We keep it because we know we are never going to look like the same we did 10 years ago. Like most images, it speaks a thousand words. We look at the background, the subject of the image, the action of the image, the lighting, the place, etc. By looking at those things we try to remember or imagine what it could've been like at that very moment the picture was made or taken.
               Images become our identity: our race, class, gender, etc.  Artist Joshua McFadden has used identity to come to terms with the current events. He is an African-American middle class male artist who recently had his artwork displayed in a gallery called "Come To Self-Hood." His exhibition consisted of photos of male African-Americans like him and have a photo of them next to a photo of their father approximately at the same age. He then had them write about their experience with masculinity and how their father's influence impacted their lives. His art alone shows what it is like for someone to go through what everyday people of the same identity. To personally see the artwork in person it felt empowering to know what he was fighting for and the message he was getting across. I especially loved the self portraits of him with he charcoal and coffee stains over the photographs. The photographs showed him dressed as an everyday black male each with  different outfit. It was interesting to know he used those everyday objects to manipulate the photo. By examining my own identity being a female, it can help me better understand my own and to better represent myself through images.

Selfie inspired by Joshua Rashaad Mcfadden

               Artists like Frida Kahlo used identity as how she lived it rather than what she already is. Frida Kahlo had most of artwork look unusual, but it was her reality. She claimed to say that her artwork is not surreal because its her art. Her painting after she had a miscarriage was a very graphic one by showing all her feelings into symbols for her pain. Those images were her way of communicating how she felt and how that changed her as a person. Her own experiences became a story for the subject of her paintings. Without those experiences, she would be a different person. With her growing up there were not many female artists to be inspired by so she had to be that light for many more to come.

Selfie inspired by Frida Kahlo

                In the media, images teach us a lot about ourselves. It teaches us to have a taste for certain things that are sometimes influenced by other people's taste. Media can be a way of mass communication through printmaking and other kinds techniques. Andy Warhol was one of the first first artists of the pop art movement with his Campbell soup paintings. He was able to show the art of mass production which was becoming a life-changing thing for society. He was able to change the face of images in the media. His other famous work involving Marilyn Monroe and his self portrait being chocked was made with various images on top of each other to create a new image.