Self-portraiture: on photography’s reflexive surface

Elisavet Kalpaxi

This exposition deals with narcissism, narrativity, self-portraiture, and photography. It illustrates a practice-based research project instigated in 2007 that aims to decode and recover narcissism as a useful sense-making scenario or system. This approach can help make sense of photography and self-portraiture in the present, and can be employed in the development of visual strategies in photographic self-portraiture. Here I present the practical work that was produced and the theory that influenced my practice: namely, the revaluation of the relationship between self-portraiture and narcissism, and ideas from the semiotics of photography and narrative theory. The three main sections of the exposition illustrate the chronological development of my work, and each section is divided into two parts. The first part of each section presents the practical work, whereas the second part illustrates the theoretical aspect of this project, which stems from a wish to reflect on my own art practice and increase my understanding of self-portraiture, while also interrogating narrative codes and devices in photography, such as the double, mise en abyme, and mirroring structures, and their association with narcissism. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, semiotics, and narratology, I argue that narcissism in self-portraiture can simultaneously represent an imaginary withdrawal of the artist, a structure within the work, and a vehicle for narrativity. By eluding structured language systems, narcissism provides a vocabulary for narrativising procedures, as well as meeting the artist’s/viewer’s modes of engagement. These ideas informed the practical component of the research project and provided the basis for a number of visual strategies employed in the development of the photographic self-portraits that are presented in the second part of each section. In these sections, I also explain the different strategies adopted in producing my images: the role of codes, narrative devices, layering, and reframing for understanding the density of an image and its inherent narcissism. In the process I propose that narcissism should receive a much more central role in the consideration of images and the way they communicate with a contemporary audience.

Elisavet Kalpaxi

Self-portraiture: on photography’s reflexive surface

ἡ γὰρ πρὰν ἐς πόντον ἐσέβλεπον, (ἡς δὲ γαλάνα)

καὶ καλὰ μὲν τὰ γένεια, καλὰ δ’ ἐμὶν ἁ μὶα κὼρα

(ὡς παρ’ ἐμιν κέκριται) καταφαίνετο· τῶν δέ τ’ ὀδόντων

λευκοτέραν αὐγαν Παρίας ὑπέφαινε λίθοιο.

ὠς μὴ βασκανθῶ δέ, τρὶς εἰς ἐμὸν ἔπτυσα κόλπον¹.

(Theocritus, third century BC [1869: 26])

Nobody – that’s my name. Nobody –

(Homer, third century BC [1997: 223])

This exposition presents a practice-based research project, developed between 2007 and 2012, which aims to establish a better understanding between self-portraiture, narcissism, and narrativity in individual photographic images and in photography overall. The research was inspired by a concern with photographic self-portraiture and directorial and narrative images, which were already a strand of my art practice when the project begun. The study consists of parallel explorations of theory and practical concerns that are displayed side by side, mirroring each other. The theoretical exploration consists of a comparative analysis of the concepts of narcissism, narrativity, indexicality, self-consciousness, and viewers’ involvement, through studies that bring these concepts to centre stage; meanwhile, the practice addresses these concepts in visual terms, through the use of visual codes, devices, and vocabularies that aim to instigate the narcissistic metaphor and give it a useful role in the construction of a fictional universe. All aspects of the project – theoretical exploration, concerns related to my practice, and the work itself – can be seen as a narcissistic undertaking; thus, the exposition employs a first person perspective. The exploration is presented in chronological order, starting with the concerns that influenced the instigation of my research back in 2007.

The View inside the Mirror, 2008, silver-print, 60 × 60 cm.

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