Photography is not about re-creating the world exactly as it is. Rather, it’s about what happens when our vision and the manner in which our cameras manipulate light combine to create new worlds. So when we turn our cameras on ourselves, who shows up in the image? Me, I call the person in my self-portraits the fourth person.
The fourth person
I have the idea of the fourth person from a quote attributed to Man Ray in the book Man Ray fotografie/photographs 1925-1955:
Like other painters I’ve made self-portraits, even photographic ones, but I’ve always been tempted to deform or alter the image in such a way as to erase any intention of seeking a resemblance. You might say – in the fourth person.
As a linguist and grammarian by training, I was intrigued by this statement. The languages we’re the most familiar with in the Western world – English, French, German and so on – have grammatical systems with three persons. The first person is I, the person who is speaking. The second person is you, the person I am speaking to. The third person is he or she, the person you and I are speaking about.
So there is no fourth person in my language, but there is in my photography.
The woman in my current series of self-portraits is not me, since even those who know me best would not recognize me here unless they knew in advance that I’m the model.
This woman is not you, since the question «May I take your picture?» terrifies me.
Neither is this woman a third person I snuck a photo of on the street one day.
No, the woman in my self-portraits is someone and something else, a fourth person, me but also a not-me that I use to express my thoughts and emotions in such a way that they speak to the viewer while – hopefully – leaving room for the viewer’s own thoughts and interpretation.
The importance of inspiraton
One of the things I have always loved about the Mortal Muses is that the site gets me out there to shoot and try new things. This is equally true now that I am a contributor here myself. When I started taking and editing self-portraits like the above with my phone, it was the result of reading this post by Urban Muser.
Urban Muser, as I’m sure you all know, is a gifted self-portrait artist, and I asked her to pick two of her favourite selfies and tell me about who the woman in her images is. This is what she answered:
I think that the woman in my self-portraits is a combination of both the first and the fourth person. Through the use of my trusty iPhone apps, I often render myself an unrecognizable fourth person in my selfies, so–as Man Ray described–I “deform or alter the image in such a way as to erase any intention of seeking a resemblance.” But often times the images are influenced heavily by the way I am feeling on a certain day or a moment or emotion that I want to capture and memorialize, so in that sense, the first person lingers just beneath the surface. In short, she is me, not me, the me I want to forget, and sometimes the me I want to be.
Urban Muser hits upon something here that I think is crucial – the many different faces of self we all have.
Coming back to Man Ray
Man Ray himself appears to have been a man of many faces. Take his name: He was born Emmanuel Radnitsky, but when his family changed their surname to Ray, supposedly to escape the growing anti-Semitism in the early 20th century, he took the name Man Ray. What did it mean to him to change his name? Probably quite a lot; it’s easy to forget how important our everyday names are to our identity. Personally, I introduce myself with the English pronunciation of my name when I speak English – in Norwegian the j- in my name is pronounced like the y- in yes – because I become a slightly different person when I speak a different language, and I like to have that reflected in my name.
What is more, not only did Man Ray move several times between New York and Paris – and there is no doubt that travel, not to mention relocation, changes you forever – but he was also married twice. His second wife, Juliet, was a dancer and a model, and their marriage lasted from 1946 until he passed away in 1976. In 1955 he completed a collection of photographs, shot over a ten-year period, called The Fifty Faces of Juliet, containing portraits of his wife. The portraits were mostly of her face, since Man Ray, according to the same book quoted above, believed that the human face has a “natural disposition for expressing the mysterious” (my emphasis).
And this brings us neatly back to the fourth person. The fourth person comes into being at the intersection between the photographer’s camera and her vision of herself. This is a mysterious process, and when the resulting image has a touch of this mystery, the image is open for interpretation and thus more likely to trigger interest and new thoughts with the viewer.
I know that there are many of you in our wonderful community who shoot self-portraits. Tell me about them! Who is the person who appears in your selfies?
All the best from Jenny.
what a very interesting post, I had never thought of self portraits in this way
Neither had I, until I read that book. Isn’t that just the beauty of reading, when what we read gives us new ideas 🙂
jenny, thanks for asking me to chime in here on this post. it was an interesting exercise to think about self-portraits in this context!
My pleasure – I loved to have your contribution!
Some great food for thought!! Thank you for sharing.
Thank you! I’m happy that you got something out of it.
Jenny, this is such a thought-provoking post. I love the way you think about language and photography all at the same time! Thank you.
Language and photography are my two main interests really, so thinking about both at the same time comes fairly easily 🙂
I have been enjoying your series. I have not heard of the 4th person but find it very interesting. My self portraits are usually me, 1st person, but the ones I want to express or create emotion are 4th person where I am in the picture but just as part of the scene, as a prop to the whole of it. Not easy to create but once completed they are the most satisfying. Thanks for sharing UrbanMuser’s comments. I admire her work.
That’s an interesting perspective – the fourth person as part of a scene. Thank you!
so provocative.
Glad to hear it; isn’t provoking thoughts – of whatever kind – the ultimate goal of writing or any other creative effort really?
I, too, had never thought of my selfies as a 4th person, but after reading your post I can completely see this is true. They are me, but not me. Thank you! I really enjoying this and your self portraits are lovely.
Thank you, Barbara!
This is so good. I have trouble sharing my first person and have actually felt guilty about my self-portraits that avoid showing the “I.” I felt like it was cheating, somehow, to share those blurry, cropped, textured versions of myself when I couldn’t be comfortable showing “just me,” as well. But this turns that on its head. You may have just inspired me to try selfl-portraits again.
This. So very much this – I was never comfortable about selfies either until I started editing them like I do here. I don’t think it’s cheating at all! And do share your selfies if you do try again 🙂
Wonderful post, Jenny! Love how you’ve woven together language, photography, content, and context, plus some Man Ray history. And wow, your images are stunning!!! My fav is the first, for its beautiful design, value arrangement, and emotive qualities. Enjoyed your addition of Christy’s views and images, too. Thanks much.
Thank you for your lovely words, Anna!
Very interesting post. I like the way you have planted a new thought in me about the 4th, I went through a period of shooting in the 3rd and using words like “she” but 4th, that’s an entirely new dimension I had never considered. I have to add that you and urban muser have some very intriguing and awesome SP’s. Very inspiring post. Thank you.
Selfies in the 3rd person is an interesting thought! I don’t think it would have occured to me – I can’t detach that much from images of myself.
Jenny, this is an incredible post. I love it for so many reasons. Your photos, and Christy’s, are stunning. I never heard or read this quote from Man Ray, so it has all new ideas and possibilities stirred up. And who is in my self-portraits? Many times it is first person, but I work to make them universal, encompassing the 2nd person. But 4th? Wow….. Thank you for this piece. It’s a gift.
Aw Meghan, thank you for such sweet words! Working to make your self-portraits encompass the 2nd person sounds very courageous; I think I’m going to stay in the shy and indirect 4th for a while yet 🙂
I love this post Jenny! It gets my brain juices flowing and makes me start to wonder about if I’ve ever used the 4th person in my own self-portraiture…and I don’t think I have. I love that you talk about Man Ray…it’s been so long since I thought of his work. Thank you for the mental goods and teaching me something new 🙂
Man Ray really is a fascinating artist; strangely invisible on the internet really, which just makes me all the more interested in exploring his work further. And thank *you* 😉
What a lovely and thought provoking post today!
I feel similar, it is me, and it is not me in my self portraits- I think this is part if why I love self portraiture so much. I get to explore and learn more about myself through each frame I shoot.
Exactly! To me, selfies seemed both scary and uninteresting when I thought about them as only showing me, but when I started including not-me, it got a whole lot more interesting. If that makes sense 🙂
Most thought provoking post Jenny and beautiful fourth person project you have started!
Thank you!
What a great post. So inspiring!
Thanks – I appreciate you saying so!
This is so inspiring. I will definitely be taking my next self-portrait with a new perspective!
I’m glad to hear it. Thanks for stopping by and letting me know!
Thank you, so much for this post, Jenny. It so resonated with me. I’ve been trying to write about my 365 portrait project since January. The concept of the ‘fourth person’ really helped me ease into an explanation of my process. I quote your article here: http://halfcenturymarkhotel.com/2013/03/25/selfies-documenting-a-life/. I realize just stating Jenny, photographer was inadequate. Could I link to your personal work and blog within my site? Let me know. and again, thank you for the inspiration.
I’m so glad to hear that you were inspired by this!
Honestly, I’m pouring all my creative energy into the Mortal Muses these days and don’t quite know what to do with my very dormant personal blog, so if anything you could link to me here: http://mortalmuses.com/tag/jenny-graver/
Thank you!
http://www.ooobag.com/wallet/louisvuitton/monogram/2010fce8701ce1ae.html
激安ブランド,財布コピー,偽ブランド,偽 ブランド財布,偽物ブランド財布,ブランドコピー,ヴィトンコピー,ルイヴィトン財布偽物, シャネル財布コピー,グッチ財布コピー,エルメス財布偽物,D&G 財布コピー,ボッテガ 財布 .2013年新作スーパーコピーロレックス,スーパーコピーロレックス時計通販スーパー コピー品その他の世界一流ロレックススーパーコピー時計品を扱っています。 }}}}}}