SPILLING OUT

By MICHAEL PERKINS

I CAN NOT PROVIDE A SATISFACTORY DEFINITION FOR THE WORD SURREAL, anymore than I could define the “reality” that it’s supposedly a departure from. It’s one of those terms that gets volleyed back and forth across the net of popular discourse, but it strikes me as more of a label for a sensation than for any definable state. And as for what constitutes surreality in a work of art, I can tell you what I feel much better than I can explain what that is. So everyone put your pencils down.

I can identify those moments in the act of picture-making that seem to call for images that go beyond the parameters of the known world, photos that require some kind of departure from reality…..and, again, don’t ask me to explain it. One of the subjects which always strikes me as a bit extra-real is myself, since I have to admit that I may never have gotten a self-portrait really “right”. It’s crazy to think that, in viewing myself in a reverse lens image or a mirror reflection, that I could gain enough distance from myself to make an objective interpretation of my own face, which is just the front layer for a mind that may or may not be in evidence, visually, on any given day. And so, in any kind of selfie, I have to trust the instinct and emotion of the moment and hope something halfway true comes out of it all.

Still.

What you see here started out merely as an exercise in “can I really do this?” and began to take on a life all its own. The initial takes were all about trying to overcome the technical mine field between imagining the idea and shooting it. The further along the process went, however, the more I found myself trying to make some kind of statement in my chosen of facial expression. For who? To say what? Is this right? Are we still just playing? Far from coming up with any answers, I’m still trying to even agree with my various selves as to what the freaking questions are. That’s any art, really, and certain a testimony to the face that photography is an art and not merely a craft. The selfie dilemma remains constant; who do I want to appear to be? And, once I answer that, how do I even go about it? Selfies are not documents, not in the way we understand one. There is always something else spilling out, making mischief, clouding the issue.

And how did you spend your Sunday?