We often define ourselves based on the way others see us. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We are not our nationality, or our skin colour, or our job title. We are a human essence. The more multi-cultural our world, the less we will be defined by our outer traits, and the more we will be acknowledged to be our most inner, essential self, writes Janne Teller.
When I first saw the French-Moroccan artist Yasmina Bouziane’s self-portrait as a modern Beduin photographer (‘Native Photographing, the signature picture, Reluctantly Untitled #6’), it instantly struck me how the photo regarded me just as well. In her staged hand Yasmina’s lense takes aim at the audience, the camera is turned 180 degrees: The art sees the one who sees.
All the while I was contemplating a humorous, identity-exploring, modern colonial portrait, I myself turned into nothing but someone watching that very photo watching me. I must assume that the photo’s frame of reference is nothing but itself. It cannot fathom anything about me except for my looking at it, which further implies that seen from another photo, I’ll be someone else; I’ll be a person who regards that other photo. And I’ll turn into yet another, when I move my gaze onwards to a third photo.
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