A wordplay on the Chainsmokers 2014 smash hit single, Let Me Capture a #Selfie began as an endeavor in capturing the vulnerabilities of my peers. Earlier this semester, I asked a smattering of my friends the question, “what are the moments in which you feel the most vulnerable or exposed?” I recorded each answer and compiled a list. I had planned to photograph each person I interviewed posing representations of their respective answers. As I deepened my layers of analysis, my look into social media and the ever-present selfie made me think about the possibility of projecting my own insecurities onto my subjects. I decided therefore not to expose others with my work, but to expose myself. Thus, Let Me Capture a #Selfie morphed into an investigation of my own personal vulnerabilities.
Of late, it seems our generation spends more time constructing images of themselves and less time capturing moments that reveal an authentic story of emotional experience. Rarely do we see pictures of our friends on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat that portray their subjects as anything but happy, beautiful and having a wonderful time with their lives. For a phenomenon as globally pervasive as the selfie, one would think it would speak to a deeper layer of the human psyche; yet, a veil of artificiality remains at the forefront of its culture.
For my final project, I wanted to explore the void of vulnerability in today’s photographs, particularly in the selfies that inundate our consumption of media every day. The “selfie,” the allegedly spontaneous, thoughtless snap of its subject in his or her natural state, is still a matter of lighting, pose, and angle. For Let Me Capture a #Selfie, I took various “selfies,” or had friends photograph me of their own accord, during times of emotion. I tried my best to produce each photo during the height of said emotion and to use only edits of exposure and contrast to enhance the photographic quality (#nofilter). Drunken crying, substance-induced paranoia are just a two examples of moments I've attempted to authentically illustrate.
For the purpose of this project, these photos live online, on a platform that many my age are intimately familiar with. Tumblr has provided countless millennials with a space for expression and self-exploration, and I found it uncannily apropos for this endeavor. Through this, my goal is to encapsulate the essence of my insecurities in the context of the media our generation knows so well: the ubiquitous and paradoxical selfie, a photo we've all taken but rarely ever truly captured.
