Project #5

Everybody has their secrets. Everyday people put up bigger and stronger fronts in order to shield all of their problems away from the rest of the world. One does not know what an individual has gone through, what they did, what the heard or spoke, but in some way they have touched another human being in some way. These days, Internet and technology has taken over almost every single aspect of the daily life. 

Now, everyone has the opportunity to talk to half the world all by just typing away on the keyboard. Yet no one really takes the time to think of what they are going to say or if even the truth will be said. Like in photography, a photo can mean a thousand different things. With stage constructed images, it shows one image and you can immediately state what the meaning or concept is behind it.

In Leo Manovich’s, essay The Paradoxes of Digital Photography, a point is made how all these new technologies has changed the way we develop our ideas and concepts in terms of photography. Digital photographs can be altered and manipulated to the point where the function of the photograph changes. It allows one to cover a blemish that should not be there and makes the lighting better and so on. However, relating this to people, like photography we have also become jaded. One makes it seem like they are completely different on the Internet rather than how they are in real life, and on average, we as a society seem to spend more time on the Internet meeting people, than one does in person. 

This digital revolution has been great in terms of developing skills in photography and beyond, but it has also strayed us from the truth. The concept of secrets, though not as thoroughly researched has helped me to discover things about myself and about the world I live in.

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I have also reworked the Photo Assignment, because I felt that it didn't express enough the concept that everyone has something that is so hidden, that it takes talking to to realize the story behind the person. 

Project # 4 - Performance Project

Yes, this is extremely late. I'm sorry. I haven't been doing/feeling well For the past three weeks or so.

Here is my Performance Project:

I was asked to carry out a performance based on a theme. This video contains me reading out various confessions that I had anonymously sent in through my formspring account and also several of my own. The flipping of the pages are the journals I had accumulated over the years and contain several stories and secrets that I had hidden away in them. People are full of secrets and the wonderful people who opened up to me makes me want to meet them. Watching this video, I hope that others will question who the holders of these secrets are and let each person take a deeper meaning into this.

Tal Vez