Module Work: Wiki Ciesla
15th December 2017
A post-modern informed self-portrait created by first year Wiki Ciesla.
Postmodernism “advocated that individual experience and interpretation of our experience was more concrete than abstract principles. While the modernists championed clarity and simplicity; postmodernism embraced complex and often contradictory layers of meaning.” (Tate Modern, no date: online). An element that postmodernism embraces is subjectivity, as well as being focused on self-representation. With this piece of work, the focus was to create a surreal image that embraces subjectivity, but there are layers of psychological meanings to this image as well which suggest a lack of knowingness about the subject.
Through this self-portrait, I am trying to convey an element of postmodernism whereto it does not portray a clear image of myself but rather creates a surreal image that leaves the viewer to develop their own interpretation of the work. Further, this work builds on the concept as to what extent photography shows the reality, even in the form of a self-portrait. This is shown through the fact that one cannot really tell much about me, the subject of the image. This element of mystery and lack of reality is prominent throughout postmodernism and through my work I want to convey the different ways within which one can observe this self-portrait and raise the question of how much do we really know about the subject.
Postmodernist photography has a role in displaying something subjective and psychological due to the fact that the viewer begins to question not only how much of the image is a reality, but also the different layers that form the image. The subjectivity of the image implies that there is not one, similar way to view it and in this way postmodernist photography stimulates surreal and psychological elements.