Project Proposal

Through the Looking Glass: Self Through Reflections

It’s almost human nature to look into any reflective surface as people walk by. I know I catch myself looking at my reflection in store windows, shinny surfaces, even at my job in the freezer window every time I pass.  I don’t understand why we have this weird obsession with looking at ourselves.  Is it because we want to make sure our hair or our makeup isn’t out of place? Or is it just because we’re narcissistic?

The idea of narcissism dates back to Greek Mythology and the story of Narcissus.  He was led to a pool where he saw his reflection.  He was so memorized by his beauty that he fell in love.  He ended up dying at the pool because he was unable to leave his image in the water.  This is an extreme case obviously but still us humans do a similar thing even if it is just a glance for a brief second.

I’m going to be doing my project on reflections of myself in these little “mirrors” that I look at myself in daily. Whenever I catch myself looking in a window or a shiny object and remember to I’m going to take a photo of the reflection that I was seeing in it.  I wanted to do this because I just want to see all the different places where my narcissism begins to show.  By taking these photos I can see what is happening in the reflection around me too.  Usually I only focus on myself and pass by but it will be interesting to see what the rest of the world is doing around me as they are also reflected in the image.

I took a couple photos of myself in reflective images in the past that have always stuck out to me and I’ve never forgotten about so I’m going to be adding those to the selections just to show what originally got me started on the idea.  These photos were the main reason that I chose to explore this topic more thoroughly.  However, the majority of the photos are going to be new from the beginning of my time in Dublin until the end of the semester when the project is due.  From all of those I will sort out and pick the best looking representations of what I’m trying to show in my portfolio.

Reflection photo I took that influenced me to photograph this topic

I’ve decided to photograph only reflections of myself because this way maybe I’ll learn the rational behind why I glance at my reflection so often everywhere I can.   I also think that it would be a lot harder to get good reflections of other people unless you ask them if you can take it.  But the downside of asking them if you can take it is you can’t really get a natural photo.  They would try to act unfazed by the camera but would still have a different pose than if you would catch them in the act without them knowing.

As for the look of these photos I always like to edit photos a little bit because I think there’s always something you can do to make a photo look better than the original print. However for most of these reflection photos I want to edit them to look more like a dream-like photograph or like mystical.  Just to kind of go along with the idea that the mirror shows a different image to every person and at every moment which makes it seem like it’s another world inside the reflective surface.  By editing my photos the way I plan it will add to this idea of a different world being seen in these mirrors each time they’re looked into.  Once all these photos are taken and put together its going to be interesting to see what patterns arise and what things are different in each and how the entire look has changed over time.