Self

"The third dimension, that of reflectivity, derives from the human capacity to make both the world and our own existence objects of our active regard, to turn a kind of mirror not only on phenomena in the world, including our own bodies and our social relations, but on our consciousness too, putting ourselves at a distance from our own being so as to examine, judge, and sometimes regulate or revise it" (Seigel, Jerrold).

"The universe of objects and their relations that science makes intelligible to us appears as it does because of the way our minds work in giving order and stability to the raw data of sense-experience'; it is a world we create" (Seigel, Jerrold).

Seigel, Jerrold E. The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century. New York: Cambridge UP, 2005. Print.

This is something I brought up in my meeting earlier today, this idea of incorporating myself into my images. I'm still trying to figure a lot of things out, like who I am or what my purpose is and what my art means to me and other people. I've been really confused for a lot of this semester and I think I had the idea to incorporate myself into my images to make more sense of how I feel and maybe give myself a sense of purpose. After talking about it in the meeting though, I feel a lot more confident that even though I'm not physically represented in the image, the image represents me and the experiences I had in that place. Another person could go to the same spot and they couldn't take the same image I did. That's what makes my experience unique, it will never be experienced again. Just showing my collection of photographs shows off a whole collection of experiences I have had and those are specific just to me.