On a Clear Day

Self-Absence Recognized During Portraiture and Its Paradox.

During a portrait session, I felt a distinct dissonance in responding to words addressed to me—a sense that the replies were not truly my own. This experience of depersonalization has visited me many times before. Even the pressure exerted on my finger when focusing on the subject or pressing the shutter felt strangely remote. They gazed at me in silence; our eyes met only on the surface, yet within their gaze I was absent.

This is the paradox I experience within states of depersonalization. Portrait photography is predicated upon the mutual recognition of self and other: the person depicted is the other, and the one who photographs is “I.” However, when I am internally severed from myself, my presence as a tangible subject collapses. Even as I act as the agent of the photograph, the sense of subjectivity vanishes. In those intervals when I cannot recognize myself, the intersubjective space between us fractures.