“Please attach one self-portrait (5 megabytes 300 px) here. “
I gawked at the instruction for the photojournalism program scholarship application. Photography is my passion, yet taking a simple self-portrait felt foreign to me. What do I do? Smile? Pose? Glare?
I gawked at the instruction for the photojournalism program scholarship application. Photography is my passion, yet taking a simple self-portrait felt foreign to me. What do I do? Smile? Pose? Glare?
Identity
The first photograph I see is that of an 8-year old African-American girl from Washington, D.C., clenching a blonde, blue-eyed, white doll to her chest. When I look at her, I see my past, the need to hide my Asian-American identity within my white-dominated community. I see myself in middle school, when I stopped laughing after my friends wondered why my eyes were fully closed when I giggled, which of course they weren’t. Laughter, the most beautiful thing, was now my most shameful flaw. But when I joined the Asian Student Union in high school, I realized that I was not alone in the isolation I felt. Surrounded by others who had similar experiences, we learned that none of us was to blame for the shame we felt. A group of us decided that something had to be done. We raised awareness about the importance of addressing race in the classroom, slowly pushing for changes in how we have these conversations in our community. The girl who was too afraid to laugh became the girl who had the courage to speak up.
Growth
My eyes wander around the gallery until I see a photograph of my teammate in our boathouse, breathing calmly and incredibly focused as she begins her training. She looks nothing like me, a barely 100-pound weakling who got cut from the middle school basketball team and never won a physical competition in her my life. However, in the time I spent on my school's rowing team, this very boathouse was a space for my sweat, tears, pain, and grit. The community I had around me allowed me to find power not from winning, but from the process. Winning became sitting at the silent start line with ten other boats; winning became joking with my teammates during our post 5k stretches; and winning became pushing off the dock to disrupt the glass water as the sun rose.
Passion
The last photograph I see is of the chaos that was the Brown Student Fashion Show that was this past April. During my first year, I got introduced to the world of fashion photography when I was asked to join Fashion@Brown. My role as a photographer was to take simple snapshots of every person who strutted down the runway-one shot of each person and on to the next. However, I got yelled at after I tried to ditch the actual show and sneak back behind to get more shots backstage, as I got simply bored of what was happening on the runway and was more interested in telling the story of the chaos that was going on behind the scenes. While my portfolio has recently developed more in the direction of fashion photography, I find myself more interested in telling the stories of people that are not obvious, the stories that I believe need to be heard. Fashion@Brown didn't actually end up publishing any of the photos I took behind the scenes (I guess I failed my assignment), but I was still in love with my collection of photos people running around preparing for the show, as their images told a greater story than just what people saw on the runway, the exterior. Moving beyond the exterior had always been my challenge, just as it was the night I attempted a self-portrait. My passion for telling stories of other people through my camera really does illustrate my natural opposition to my first self portrait assignment. The photographs I have taken have revealed more about my identity, growth, and passion, than any traditional head shot. These photographs, where and why I took them, are my self-portrait.
Ironically, I did end up getting that scholarship. While I still felt dissatisfaction with my self-portrait, I now would not be stumped if someone ever asked me for another: I would present these three photographs. I was subconsciously drawn to these subjects because each represents a significant vignette about my identity; what my eyes saw through a 35 mm lens reveals more than any self-portrait I can take.