Blog #23

1. In what ways do you “construct” your identity? In what ways do you “perform” in your daily life?

• I construct my identity with my clothing, appearance (hair), and attitude. These elements come together to help people recognize me on a daily basis, if not for my consistent physical appearance. My attitude, being immature and compassionate, is another recognizable feature that is part of my identity.
• I perform many emotions and things I say in my daily life. To better cope with situations, or relate with others, I must at times perform emotions or play the caring role to continue being liked by the people around me. However, I begin to confuse this performance with true feelings.

2. Describe some ways in which your personal culture and social environments are “constructed”.

• The people we choose to be around have been constructed by our own free will. We chose to align ourselves with certain groups - jocks, gamers, boy, girls, hetero/homosexuals, etc. These people are whom we felt best matched our identity. A more literal example of constructed social environments and personal culture is found online. With social networking sites, people are able to create and define themselves to show others who may be interested and want to become "friends."

3. Describe some ways in which your physical environment/space is “constructed”.

• Our space is constructed through a mix of emotions, preferences, and uncontrolled factors. For example, everyone could decorate the same room a different way. People feeling happy may use bright colors and people feeling sad may use neutrals. Some may just like wood floors, others may like carpeting. And some may not be able to afford certain items, so their room is a bit more basic. Our constructed environment is much more complex and takes many unconscious decisions to arrive at a final result.

4. In your daily life, what would you consider to be “real” and what would you consider to be “constructed/fabricated”?

• Things that are real are just objects - a ball, a dog, dinner plates, a plant. Things that are constructed are more abstract - a bedroom layout, the members of a group of friends, the choice in clothing for a particular day. Real is simple and mostly unchangeable, it comes the way it is. Constructed is created and assembled through personal preferences and thoughts.

5. Describe a narrative tableaux that you might create to be captured by a photograph. A narrative tableaux can be defined as “Several human actors play out scenes from everyday life, history, myth or the fantasy of the direction artist” ( Constructed Realities: The Art of Staged Photography Edited by Michael Kohler , 34).

• My photograph would be of many people waiting in line for a single porta-potty, preferably at some sort of event like a carnival. Each person would be a different race, height, weight, and have different types of clothing. The narrative behind this photo is no matter how different we all may appear, everyone still has natural instincts and drives that make us the same. Even in the midst of an event that involves all walks of life, people come together if even for just the simplest thing like using the bathroom.

6. Describe an idea for a photograph that includes a miniature stage or still life. A description of such an image is “The tableaux reconstructs events as in the narrative tableaux, but in miniaturized format, using dolls and other toy objects” (Kohler, 34).

• My idea is to photograph a one small doll sitting at the end of a long miniature dinner table. Two larger dolls would then be at the sides of the long table, blurred a great deal because of the focus on the small doll. there would be miniature empty dinner played in front of them and a light source adding more focus to the small doll at the end. The narrative behind this is that in a child's world (doll world), they feel more in control. A child's imagination can let them become who they want to be, while in real life the scenario may be the complete opposite.