In my mini project “My Many Faces” each image represents something about me or a way a see myself. I believe that we all have many “faces” beside the physical one that we present to the world, that normally we try to put our best face to the world. The other faces are deeper than just the physical part of us, but in my project, I represent physically what people don’t easily see in me.
“Insecurity”
In this image I am a clown, an insecure clown. The image represents how I feel most of the time when I want to call myself a photographer. I started photography as a hobby, and I haven’t been able to work or find any kind of job not even part time in photography. Is hard for me to have confidence even though I am doing an MFA in photography. I don’t tell this to people obviously but is the way I feel. The red on the image represents the stress that this cause to me. I used a barn door with red gel for the red effect and a snoot to illuminate my face.
“Beautiful”
In this image I want to represent the beautiful things that I have as a person not necessarily physical beauty, but good attributes of my personality and of who I am as a person. I love bright colors and flowers, so I decided to use them in this image. The colorful flowers represent those good things, like for example I am a responsible, compassionate, happy, hard worker, lover of nature, hopeful, Christian, mother, wife among other things. All those things adorn who I am.
“In Between”
For this image I wanted to represent my past, my future, and the transition in between. I am in a stage of my life where I am in the middle of life. I am getting older but still feel young but when I look myself in the mirror the process of aging is visible, but still, I am not that old. I left some of the flowers in my face because the good attributes don’t go away, they will grow old with us. In this image I use a gray background as a neutral representation of being in between.
“Bubbly”
My normal self is a very shy, introvert person, at least until I get familiar and comfortable with the people I am with. After I am comfortable with people then I am a very talkative, funny, clownish person I could be. But I am very selective and that part of me manifest with very a close circle of people… Unless I drink wine. Wine can speed up my bubbly personality or completely temporally delete my introvert self. I love all kinds of wines, and all have the same effect, but sparkling is the one that I identify when the bubbly personality shows up. I love blue, is my favorite color and it represents open spaces and freedom for that reason I decided to use it for background.
“Dark Side”
If I want to be real with myself, then this face must be part of the project. Who doesn’t have a dark side? The dark side is the part that we are ashamed of, the part that we don’t like about ourselves. Maybe when we get mad, or out of control, for me besides all that it also represents my mistakes, my wrong decisions, the moments that was selfish and ignorant. But thanks God for maturity, is one of the good things that comes with aging. For me this dark side is almost dead, I try my all my heart to be a better person every day. But even the dark side is almost dead still there, reminding me about my humanity.
Xamara Maisonet 