Self Portrait
2020
Ah-Di: “Whats this? For me? This is me! The back of my head! What’s this for?”
Yang Yang: “You can’t see it yourself, so I help you.”
N.J.: “So that’s why!”
— Yi Yi, 2000 (Dir. Edward Yang)
What we as individuals identify as “truth” can never be objectively agreed upon. We interpret the world around us through our basic senses of sight, sound, smell and touch, filtered through our underwhelming brains, directed by our selfish biases, and swayed back and forth by personal motives. But when it comes to viewing the “truth” of one’s self, personal opinions become obsolete, and we become obsessed with the critical judgements of others. When we cannot see the back of our own head, we rely on the observations of ones we trust to fill us in on what we can never experience.Growing up in the rural countryside of Taiwan, I always found it hard to make friends. Of course, the vast chasm of the internet filled me in on more knowledge (both trivial and intellectual) than the average American teenager could ever handle. Nonetheless, I never found a sense of belonging or individualism by surfing the world wide web, and thus my understanding of myself was left incomplete.Once I came to RISD, I started meeting people like me, people who knew how it felt to be alone, who wanted to do grand things with what they loved, who were wacky just like me. In them, I saw myself, and I knew I could finally be at ease. Indeed, we are all the backs of each others heads. By choosing to photograph nine of my best friends and sharing our most intimate moments together, I hope to not only convey a better understanding of them, but also of myself. A self portrait of all of us, I suppose.
