Being and Constructedness: A Personal Journey Into Identity Formation

This thesis explores the relationship between surface and depth in photography and their influence on identity formation from the perspective of an Asperger’s personality. I saw in my prior work a sense of duality, a conceptual in-between space and the need to construct photographs as a metaphor for my confused sense of self. The present work is an exploration of how my perspective on identity expresses itself in my photographic work, which I have contextualized in relation to the apparent dialectic of internal/individual (being) versus external/social (constructedness). I have further contextualized my work relative to four artists I have identified as representing the use of portrait photography as a means of exploring what lies beneath the surface: Guillaume‐Benjamin‐Amand Duchenne de Boulogne’s direct, literal approach, Florence Henri’s connection between literal and metaphorical, Nancy Burson’s consideration of the relationship between “believing” and “seeing”, and Elisabeth King’s exploration of the relationship between mind and body through “attention’s loop”. My projects, “emotional me”, “mirror/mask”, “collaborative self‐portrait”, and “the emotions project” individually and collectively play on key elements of each of these four approaches to identity. There is a way to balance between internal needs and external pressures when forming a sense of self. For me that balance is found not in words but in a non‐linguistic, non‐linear form of photographic narrative. I have come to believe that photography – which I see as a medium that both transmits and reflects, that retains some of the pre‐modern assumption of transparency – is the medium that will allow me to explore the incomprehensible.