chinese photoshoots
it’s fun to be someone else
every year in high school, i’d eagerly await my annual voyage to china for my digital plastic surgery fix.
one summer the procedure took place in a dark room with a fake piano, another summer in a 2 bedroom apartment on a window ledge, and yet another in a different dynasty.
after the session, the photos would arrive in an email where we could select our favorite photos to alter. we’d send them back and a few weeks later we’d see our transformation. my friends and i would crowd around our computer to see how we look with our facial features completed blurred out.
in place of dress up and fashion, these photoshoots were the only chance all year we’d feel beautiful. looking back, i’m not quite sure how healthy it was to desire getting digitally altered, but it sure was fun getting to experience being a vogue model for a day.
these days i still love photoshoots and the glamour of capturing a moment.
i guess it’s similar to the portraits we have of important people of the past. they probably didn’t look like that, but it’s still telling to see a close-enough image of how they would look given inspiration from their natural looks.
it’s really interesting now how much desire correlates to being something else. wanting features you don’t have, and desiring to be a different version of yourself.
i distinctly remember how every time i succeed in losing weight, i didn’t appreciate my body until i gain the weight all back. then i look back at photos and realize i didn’t even enjoy the moments that i worked so hard for.
it’s so strange how hard it is to appreciate moments as they are, fleeting, unedited and raw. it feels as if every moment now is so carefully curated and every beat is so scheduled it’s hard to enjoy the passing moments of time for themselves.
Pictures can really suck the life out of a moment. It's like those indigenous people who avoid seeing their reflection because it takes part of their soul. Though, I think that's just from a French fiction book. But sometimes fiction's where the facts are at, and pictures don't capture that.
I think of Balcony by MC Escher, mainly because it's big for me right now. The most important details pop out and make a scene. Pictures are only pretend truth anyway. You can tell because two people see two different things. Most of the time people say to me "you look great" when I factually don't. Photographers get the art of twisting heads until they look at it right.
That being said seeing someone else's picture, a moment you've never been a part of, brings things to life. Sight is asymmetric like that. We were never meant to spend so much time looking at ourselves anyway. That's what we have feeling for.
p.s. you look great