The Portrait

The theme of my project was to portray that it does not matter who you are, everyone has been labeled  or called names. No matter how much you hide your feelings, everyone is slightly affected by what they are called. Whether someone means it or not, words can cut deeply. Everyone feels pain, and those labels can be a burden we carry around for the rest of our lives. I once heard a phrase that said "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but only words will leave me psychologically damaged". This phrase is beyond true. It's completely human nature to remember all the bad things people say about us, but forget the compliments we receive. We dwell on our flaws people point out and think about all the characteristics that are wrong with us. It's cliche, but we should only treat people the way we would want to be treated.

In order to create a somber and striking mood, I turned off all the lights and waited for it to get dark outside. Then I should a desk lamp and shined it at different angels in order to get differently lighting on peoples' faces. I asked everyone to write down on a piece of paper everything they remember being called throughout their lives. I wrote it on their faces in black with eyeliner in order to make it really stick out. Almost every single person wore a black or white shirt because I didn't want any colors or design to take away from their faces. One of the portraits is blurry on purpose because I liked how crazy and confused it looked, but you can still slightly make out what it says on her face. I think it kind of symbolizes how messed up insults can make people. I also choose to change the lighting for some of the pictures to make the people look lonely and depressed.

If I were to do this project again there would be a few things I would change. I would have rather taken pictures of people out in public with the names still written on their faces. I feel like this would have been better because it would've made the project more interesting to look at and it would've shown everyday people doing regular activities without knowing they have been labeled. It was kind of depressing during this photo shoot because all my roommates sat there and dwelled on what they wrote down. It made me realize that no matter how happy or "normal" someone may seem, we all have stuff bottled up inside of us that bothers us.