It’s Not Really Chicken

I’ve decided to write my Poetics of Witnessing paper about my self-portraiture project and how it relates to what we’ve been talking about. I think I’ve opened an emotional can of worms.

I was stuck for a while because I wasn’t writing more than an artist’s statement. I just kept repeating myself. So I decided to look at one of my pictures and describe it. Easy and simple. Then I started writing about the process of taking the picture, and how I asked my dad to take it, and then I started thinking about how important my dad is to me. I started writing about what may have been going through his mind at the moment, what he may think when he reflects on the image, what I think about when I look at the image…needless to say, it was emotional. I started crying in the library.

I’m a daddy’s girl, I know. And I’m hoping it’ll hit a soft spot with my professor, even though he has two sons and no daughters. But being a parent is a universal experience, right? Maybe?

And She Fights For Her Life

I just got back from a really long fucking day. I don’t like getting back at 11 and having to do work. Who the fuck does? I just don’t like what I’m doing. I don’t like denying who I am and what I’m happy doing. I enjoy photography, but I’m really not supposed to be a documentary photographer. I want to be, but I’m not. I’m not good at it. I try and I try, and nothing. That’s not true. Just this project. But I’m so burnt out, and I’ll definitely have more fails than successes after college. I can’t do that. I’m not happy. I just want to make things and not have to think so much. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy thinking and feeling smart, but I shouldn’t be thinking nearly as much as I have been. It’s not worth it. I should be doing what I love: photographing myself.

And not because I’m conceded (well, maybe). It just makes me feel special. It gives me worth. It’s me, telling myself “yeah, you’re worth it. You really are.” I’m amazing, and that’s how I like feeling. That’s what I want my work to say. I want my work to make me feel good about myself. About what I’m doing. About what I’m here for. About what makes me happy. And slowly but surely, I’m branching out to the next ripple – people I love. Eventually I’ll photograph the Arab-American community, but I need to learn to love and appreciate and saturate myself in me and the people I hold dearest to my heart.

Loving one’s self and expressing that love and happiness is just so frowned upon it seems. That’s lame.