PART 3 - PROJECT 1 - COURSEWORK
As always it is extremely difficult to talk about oneself, to define oneself, to sincerely open one's thoughts to the outside.
Elina Brotherus, in her video dedicated to her work "Suites Francaises", urges ".... be sincere ...", but I believe that few people feel comfortable doing it.
I believe that, at least for me, it is even more difficult to identify some aspects of my personality that make me objectively unique.
Being unique, in my opinion, does not necessarily mean being positively or negatively unique, but expressing a unique combination of characteristics.
Can we affirm provocatively that trying not to force yourself to be unique can make you unique?
I am afraid that this way of reasoning brings me closer to the philosophy of Karl Jaspers than to that of a photographer ...
However, I tried to make a list and I honestly identified these features:
• strong sense of justice;
• dreamer;
• susceptible;
• perfectionist;
• strong sense of abstraction;
• intuitive.
I sincerely believe I have these characteristics, even if I can't explain how I can be both a perfectionist and an intuitive at the same time, given that the two characteristics seem to be in contrast.
Perhaps this paradox makes me unique?
• strong sense of justice;
• dreamer;
• susceptible;
• perfectionist;
• strong sense of abstraction;
• intuitive.
I sincerely believe I have these characteristics, even if I can't explain how I can be both a perfectionist and an intuitive at the same time, given that the two characteristics seem to be in contrast.
Perhaps this paradox makes me unique?
I believe that most of those who make a portrait of marginalised and under-represented people do operate following an objective / documentary mode (thus following a vision from the outside and beeing outsider) or having a preconceived idea of what they want to portray, according to their personal goal and interest.
The result is a strong risk of manipulation and exploitation as a function of distorted and conditioned political and social messages.
I therefore believe that the only way to combat this negative phenomenon is to work, from within the group you want to represent.
Furthermore, this work must be interested in the good of the group it is intended to represent.
It is essential that the person representing (the willing-to-be insider) enters the group and the context, cultivating a deep relationship and trying to empathize with feelings of pain and happiness, hope and anger, hatred and love, collaboration and resentment, depression and reaction....
These feelings are the fuel of behavior, and behavior determines the identity of a group.
In this way the outsider, who would represent the group through windows, will become a complete insider, and will represent the group through mirrors.