Profile Picture

Composite Image | Oct 2018

Get a face that reads as calm, professional and welcoming. Don’t look like you need validation. Don’t look like you need money. I can’t remember why I needed this photo. My bathroom became my studio, again. The mirror helped keep my DSLR on a tripod at arm’s length. This resulted in a collection of almost identical photos of me staring into the lens from different angles.

I had this set of photos and I was bored. We would not be making any videos quite yet for our studio class. I superimposed the photos together in continuation of my tradition of profile pictures that try too hard. I was layering the body and changing scales to build a visual riddle. I played with the head, the face, the eyes and the gaze. As humans we are primed to look for faces. We see them in everyday objects, babies learn to search for the eyes very early in development [1]David Robson, “Neuroscience: why do we see faces in everyday objects?”, British Broadcasting Corporation, London, July 29, 2014, … Continue reading [2]Max McClure, “Infants process faces long before they recognize other objects, Stanford vision researchers find”, Stanford News, Stanford, CA, December 11, 2012, … Continue reading

Your brain works unconsciously to respond to the gaze even while your conscious self is looking for Photoshop lines. But you could never stare this image in the eyes, there are too many. It will always look at you more than you at it. What’s supposed to be the head here?

References

References
1 David Robson, “Neuroscience: why do we see faces in everyday objects?”, British Broadcasting Corporation, London, July 29, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140730-why-do-we-see-faces-in-objects, accessed on March 19, 2021.
2 Max McClure, “Infants process faces long before they recognize other objects, Stanford vision researchers find”, Stanford News, Stanford, CA, December 11, 2012, https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2012/pr-infants-process-faces-121112.html, accessed on March 19, 2021.