09 - UNIT 3.1: How to Tell a Meaningful Story

In this unit, Taya Iv provided an overview of questions to ask that can help self-portrait photographers to tell meaningful stories about their lives. The following are brief notes I made in response to thinking about what the questions Iv posed might mean…

Questions to Consider…

  1. What kind of a photographer am I? More of a planner or more spontaneous?

    • Planner: a person who makes plans. An organizer, developer.

    • Plan: drawings, diagrams. A method for achieving an end; a procedure, gold, and; a detailed program; the formulation of a program of action; intentions, to arrange; blueprints.

    • Spontaneous: performed or occurring as a result of a sudden, inner impulse or inclination, without pre-determination, or external stimulus; not contrived or manipulative; natural.

    • How can you plan your photographs or photo series more, both formally and conceptually? How can you randomly find inspiration and act on it quickly? How can inspiration and spontaneity impact a plan - is there flexibility built into a plan?

  2. How do I want people to feel when they look at my work?

    • Emotional response? Feeling? General response? What can make something memorable? What can make things standout? Can there be subversive elements?

  3. What story do I want to tell?

    • This question serves as a starting point, as it’s a foundational question from which everything else flows.

    • What themes can I explore? What obsessions can I explore?

    • THEME: the subject of a talk, a piece of writing, a persons, thoughts, or an exhibition, a topic. An idea that recurs in or pervades a work of art or literature. HE MAIN SUBJECT. A unifying idea, motif, repeated, or developed throughout of work.

    • Examples of themes: family; struggle; the American dream; wealth; in humanity; loneliness; friendship; free will versus fate; hope; culture, time, continuity, and change; people, places, environment; individual development, and identity; individuals, groups, and institutions; power, authority, and governance; science, technology, and society; production, distribution, and consumption; solitude; discovery; political ideologies.

    • I made the following comment on the discussion forum on the photographycourse.net website for this unit… “I’ve watched the main video a few times now and think that part of the discussion that gets into double exposure answers a separate question that could flow from “WHAT STORY DO I WANT TO TELL?” And that is - “HOW DO I WANT TO TELL THIS STORY?” So it would help one pick apart the various formal and technical choices one could make to help explore the themes one brainstorms and discovers in the first question. For example, I identified wanting to explore the theme or idea of how anxiety and depression have impacted my life. How I explore this theme could be by creating photographs that utilize chiaroscuro lighting to emphasize how alone I feel. Or I could use double exposures to contrast how I appear to the world versus how I feel inside.”

  4. How do I want to tell this story?

My answers to the questions posed…

  1. WHAT STORY DO I WANT TO TELL?

    Right now, I want to continue my exploration of my anxiety and my major depressive disorder. I want to explore how they have wrecked havoc on my life. But, more importantly, I want to explore ways that I am working to overcome all of this.

  2. HOW DO I WANT TO TELL THE STORY?

    I want to continue trying all of the techniques being explored in this course. I want to continue to expand and grow as a photographer by being able to use and have at my disposal. A large took care of creative techniques that I can play with in my photography.

  3. HOW DO I WANT PEOPLE TO FEEL WHEN THEY LOOK AT MY WORK?

    I want people to empathize with what individuals experience when they suffer from mental illness. But I don’t want to push them away either. I want to challenge people, but I also want to give them a chance to breathe.

  4. WHAT KIND OF PHOTOGRAPHER AM I? AM I A PLANNER OR AM I SPONTANEOUS?

    Like Iv, I am a bit of both, but I usually lean to be more spontaneous, especially when it comes to being open to change due to unforeseen circumstances. Planning is good, especially if it is an ongoing process of reflection and exploration. Using Pinterest, for example, can be a creative way of arranging and organizing, inspiring photos, that service ways of finding a direction, or for sharing a vision or style to others, who might be helping on a shoot.

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK…

Photo Exercise…

As one example of how one could tell a story, Iv discussed how some cameras have the ability to create double exposures in-camera. My #Sony @sony @sonyalpha #a7rii does have this function so I tried it out… having said that I didn’t keep track of which photo used which available style, although I think it was as follows:

  • PHOTOS 1 & 2: “Easy Silhouette”

  • PHOTO 3: “Texture”

  • PHOTO 4: Either “Rotate” or “Soft Filter”

  • PHOTO 5: “Sky”

I’m going to play with my in-camera apps more in the weeks to come and will keep better notes at that time.

I also found with my red shirt and the red tablecloth, the final images felt saturated, and high contrast, which sometimes I don’t mind but I toned it down here.

These photos were also posted to Instagram.

Instructor Feedback…

Extras…

The following is a post I made on the discussion board for this unit Taya Iv’s SELF PORTRAIT course…

“I’m also studying writing and there’s an excellent book on writing by Natalie Goldberg, called WRITING DOWN THE BONES, and she has many others including a direct follow up called WILD MIND. And while she looks at the creative process through the lens of writing, what she discusses is applicable to any creative process such as photography (she also paints and has a book about that as well and being about painting, a visual medium, that might have insights closer to photography). Anyway in crafting stories she brings up the idea of thinking about our obsessions as a place of inspiration for writing. And I think as you brainstorm about ideas for stories related to things you might want to consider looking at your obsessions as being something you want to photograph, especially since we are talking about portraying the self. Goldberg’s books are all available on kindle and audible, she reads most of them and she’s wonderful to listen to. She also did a talk with Julia Cameron, author of THE ARTISTS WAY, which was all about the creative process.

On CreativeLive, Joyce Maynard has some great workshops you can listen to, one on memoir, and another on personal essays. Yes, it’s on writing but she has some great ways to reflect internally, and how to process ideas, and I think they can be applicable for finding ways into self portrait photography. She also talks about obsessions!

Anyway attached is a screenshot of Goldberg’s obsessions chapter from WRITING DOWN THE BONES.”

Porter, Evan. How to write a theme statement. Words by Evan Porter, 09 Jun 2017.

08 - UNIT 2.5 - Getting the Right Focus & Foreground Tips

Practice Series…

The next unit of Taya Iv’s course, SELF PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY, as offered through @photographycoursenet examined ways of ensuring you get your focus right - which can be difficult if you can’t see yourself through a viewfinder or view screen. It also discussed using foreground objects while keeping things sharp, as sometimes, when you’re holding something, things can go out of focus easily, with the object becoming the centre of focus instead of yourself (although there are times you might want that!).

My first and last photos in this post don’t exactly fit the unit - somehow I had it in my mind that we wanted to shoot through layers. Having said that, there is a later module where Iv explores just that. But they were still fun to make.

This set of photos were also posted to Instagram and Flickr.

Pill & Supplement Series…

I also created the following short series, focussing in on my hands as I added my prescription medication and supplements to the palm of my left hand. In hindsight, I wish I had taken a shot of my hand full of pills. I feel some supplements that I take are beneficial for me, but many I could likely cut from my life. Sadly, in many ways, it’s just another kind of addiction for me.

This series is also posted on Instagram, here and here, as well as on Flickr.

Toothbrush Series…

I ended up shooting a third series for this unit, this time, while brushing my teeth.

This series is also posted on Instagram and Flickr.

Sleeping Series…

These photos are just me playing around... I had just binged several YouTube videos I had saved on a SELF PORTRAIT playlist I created a year or two ago, but never watched a lot of what I saved to it… and it inspired me to play around with my hand in front of my face or alongside my face, and then play with the blanket against the other side of my face. I like the results here. I like the fourth photo, which has a hazy look due to the fact I picked up the camera too fast before it was finished what was essentially a 2-3 second exposure due to the low light of my dark bedroom. In the last two photos I let myself breathe through my mouth and it was normal breathing but the penultimate photo looks like maybe I’m turned on or something which wasn’t the intention honestly! 🤣 … I also like the shot of my hand, as I’m trying to explore shots that aren’t just of my face.

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK…

NOTE: this feedback was for the units 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 combined.

The following was feedback given for unit 2.5 specifically…

07 - UNIT 2.4: Auto Vs Manual

The focus of this assignment was to take photos of whatever we wanted using the manual mode of our cameras. Iv also asked students to take a few self portraits using our cameras mounted on tripods, utilizing its autofocus. I used a smaller hand held tripod which sat on my chest for the last four photos posted here.

These photos were also posted on Instagram.

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK…

NOTE: this feedback was for the units 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 combined.

The following comments were for unit 2.4 specifically…

06 - UNIT 2.3: Technical Tips: ISO & Shutter Speed

This series of photos were made to explore two other aspects of the exposure triangle - ISO and Shutter Speed. The first seven photos here were under artificial light at night, and the final five under the light of an overcast day that had settled into my space through closed blinds (although photo 9, in the bathroom, was taken with the bathroom light on, mixing in with the available daylight).

These photos have also been posted on Instagram, here and here.

Freezing Motion…

From December 30, 2022: Today’s image is for a @michiganstateu @coursera program specialization I’ve been working through called PHOTOGRAPHY BASICS & BEYOND: FROM SMARTPHONES TO DSLR. Specifically it’s for the week 01 project of the second course, called CAMERA CONTROL.

I finished the first course, CAMERAS, EXPOSURE, & PHOTOGRAPHY in January 2020 with 97%, but my depression meant that finishing further courses in this specialization fell off the radar.

So I’ve moved back to it & honestly, this module scares the hell out of me as it deals with exposure. Yes, exposure. The combination of Aperture, ISO, & Shutter Speed to produce a properly exposed photograph. It’s something I can do when I have a camera in my hand, but don’t ask me to explain it to you. My dyslexia has always made understanding the theory behind the concepts difficult to grasp & remember, especially in a way that lets me teach somebody else. But I’m practicing, going over in my head the concepts about what happens when I fiddle with these settings.

More specifically, this project focused on the stopping of action to create a meaningful photograph. And my problems with this assignment lay in my insecurities at being good at stopping action, and finding something meaningful to photograph. But then, while snapchatting with @ahhlanna96 it hit me - what if I did something related to the mess in my life? I then saw the piles of laundry in my bathroom & got the idea of tossing them in the air, forever capturing them in a photograph as they flew mid-air, just one of the many things I’m juggling in life.

Artist’s Statement as Submitted to Coursera…

This photograph serves to illustrate the physical messes in my life, which are a direct result of my ongoing struggles with anxiety and major depression. The depression often leaves me having periods of time where I’m paralyzed and tasks that need my attention get ignored, and the work needed to get the chores done increases. The tossing of the socks and towels into the air serves as a metaphor for the many things I’m juggling in my messed up life.

This photo was captured at f1.8, which was fixed in the SONY ZV-1 camera I used tonight. I selected ISO400, as it allowed me to use a shutter speed of 1/80s which seemed fast enough to stop this particular action of tossing the socks & towels in the air. I also used a time lapse shutter of 5s, so there was time for me to hit the shutter release, get into position, & toss the laundry. I practiced this a lot, doing it a dozen times, & then a dozen more. I tried it with different sized towels, shirts, as well as socks before I decided on the mix of socks & washcloths.

Formally, the photograph has some areas that are blown out and overexposed - particularly around the wall sconce lights that hang on the wall with the mirror. I didn’t have as much time to devote to this as I would have liked, and the process of using a delayed shutter slowed things down. My f-stop was also fixed, so I could only control shutter speed and ISO. My camera was able to shoot five shots consecutively which helped. I did post this photo on Instagram and minor adjustments helped make the photo look more properly lit, without the blown out light sources.

I think the stop action helped convey the idea that I always have laundry on the go. I’d like to shoot this again and work on my facial expression, and with getting the clothes captured more clearly / sharply by adjusting the shutter speed.

This photo is also posted to Instagram.

Peer Reviewed Feedback on Coursera Project…

Second Stop Motion Series…

Throwing junk isn’t easy using shutter speed to capture motion. I like the first one cause you can see my face fully. I did this a few weeks ago in December for a @michiganstateu @coursera course called CAMERA CONTROL only using towels in the bathroom. I submitted these to this unit on shutter speed.

These photos are also posted to Instagram.

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK…

NOTE: this feedback was for the units 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 combined.

The following comments were for Unit 2.3 specifically…

05 - UNIT 2.2: Technical Tips: Aperture

2.2 Technical Tips – Aperture

Our fourth assignment in my course called INDOOR SELF-PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY by photographer Taya Iv, was to play with aperture by taking at least five different shots at different apertures. Iv described aperture as controlling how blurry your background is.

I do know this concept in that I can do it, but admit my dyslexia has always made being able to explain this concept to others a bit difficult for me. So, for each photo in this assignment I’m going to also provide a brief summary of what happened with each shot as I closed down my aperture over the different shots. The photos are as I shot them in my camera, I’ve done no post processing to them other than write on them the technical setting details for reference purposes only…

PHOTO 1

24mm, 1/5s @ f1.8 / ISO125: the background is blurred out due to the wide open f1.8 aperture, the maximum aperture of the lens on my Sony ZV-1 Camera I’ve been using for these little projects.

PHOTO 2

24mm, 1/4s @ f2.5 / ISO125: the background is still blurred out due to the f2.5 aperture, which is closed down a bit from the aperture of f1.8. But it’s not as blurred out as I can see more sharpness and clarity in the bedding and clothing piled on the bed, which means the depth of field is increasing, allowing one to see more things that are less blurry, further into the picture frame.

PHOTO 3

24mm, 1s @ f5.6 / ISO125: the background is more sharp and clear up to the bookcase with the calendar above it, just in front of the television on the corner. The bedding is sharp and more detailed as well. Overall, these settings increased the depth of field in the image (I should note that for all of these shots I did use a tripod with remote, as the shutter speed went into the seconds due to the ISO setting I was using of 125).

PHOTO 4

24mm, 2.5s @ f8 / ISO125: now the image appears sharp throughout to the back of the room, although some items on the desk and on the tv stand closest to wall could be sharper.

PHOTO 5

24mm, 5s @ f11 / ISO125: with the aperture now closed down to f11, the image has the greatest sharpness and clarity when it comes to viewing the image’s depth.

To go to f16 at this ISO though would have been difficult as it’s hard to sit still for even 5s. So I’d have to change the ISO to something like 400 or maybe even 1,000 to have f16 at a more appropriate shutter speed for myself as a model. When I zoom in on this photo, I can notice a slight fuzz to my hair and skin which means I likely moved ever so little in taking this 5s exposure.

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK…

These images were originally uploaded to the course website, and can also be found on Instagram and Flickr.

In posting them to Instagram, I did brighten them up a bit. Here’s those images as they appear brighter…

Extras…

The following are some good videos and links about the topic of aperture…

04 - UNIT 1.5: Introduction to Self Portrait Photography

1.5 FAQ / Introduction to Self Portrait Photography

Our third assignment in my course called INDOOR SELF-PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY by photographer Taya Iv, was to practice making our first self portraits using various simple techniques that were reviewed by Iv in the posted video lecture. I ended up shooting two photos using various techniques explored in the video, as discussed in this post.

PHOTO 1…

It’s snowing today, so I’ve been outside shovelling it. I came into the garage to drink a bottle of water and decided to pull my ZV-1 out and snap a few photos. 

I used a wide aperture with the camera set for 24mm @ f1.8 for a shallow depth of field, which was explored in the video. A lot of my selfies have a deeper depth of field, shot at f8 or greater, so the world around in me is in focus. But here I wanted the water bottle to be a bit blurred out but my eye in focus. It took 8 shots before I got one I liked. It’s hard to get layered depth with a shallow depth of field - but I think the bottle helps to achieve it in this shot. Also you can see shelves behind me. My garage is messy and maybe I could have achieved a better more interesting and even claustrophobic feel had I shifted my body to the right of where I was.
Another technique from the video is a selective focus - part of my face is covered by my hand and the bottle and I did make the conscious decision to not look directly at the camera bit to somewhere outside of the frame. I also liked the droplets on my glasses - makes one wonder why they are wet. It had stopped snowing by this time, but had I come in and done this twenty minutes earlier there might have been clumps of snow and more droplets on my glasses.

I did not edit this photo.

Overall, I’m ok with this shot. It’s not my best, but it’s not my worst. 7/10?

This photo was also posted on Instagram.

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK…

PHOTO 2…

December 26, 2021: Last night (or should I say, very early this morning?) I shot another photo as I was inspired by the #lighting coming in one of the small #windows at my Mom’s house.

For this shot, I left my settings on auto. I used a wide aperture on my Sony ZV-1, resulting in the same selection of 24mm @ f1.8, as I wanted a sharp #silhouette of my face, with the bird image in the window and the frozen #icicles behind it to also be in focus. I was okay with the background to not be tack sharp as I did want it to have a slightly #dreamlike haze to it, as we don’t often get #snow in Metro Vancouver and I’ve felt mesmerized by it.

Overall, I shot over 60 photos to get maybe five or six that I really liked and I narrowed it down to selecting this one to post on the class forum. I started playing around by taking a wide variety of shots, including some when the door to the room I was in was open, which lit myself a lot more and you could see the kitchen reflected in the shot but I didn’t like the vertical window of the shot I had taken. There were also a few shots with cars passing by but I didn’t like the placement of the cars and they messed with the sharpness of things closer in the frame, making the bird and my face slightly out of focus. Had my camera been on a tripod they might have turned out better.

For the photo I submitted, I didn’t do any post processing editing to it (you can see that photo above). But in posting this photo to Instagram, I did do some slight in Instagram editing using Instagram’s brightness and contrast tools, which helped bring out my face more (you can see that photo at the end of this post). Using a tripod and remote to snap the photos might have allowed me to physically move myself more to get my body more into the composition but I kinda like where I am, peaking into the frame.

Overall, I like this one slightly more than the one I posted drinking water. I love the contrast between the warm yellows of the street and the blue coming from a spotlight shining onto the house. I think I’d give this shot a 7.5/10 as is.

One other thing I noticed today is my date stamp was wrong on my camera!

360/365.

This photo was also posted on Instagram as seen here:

When posting it to Instagram I again made some slight adjustments to the image’s overall brightness using Instagram’s editing tools.

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK…

Extras…

This was a good video examining the use of filters and other editing tools to achieve a more perfect look, otherwise known as Selfie Dysmorphia.

Even with my own photos, where I’m trying to present a more honest look about myself - I know I try to hold my head a certain way, to hide what I find as flabbiness in my chin, cheeks and throat. I also try not to show my gut as I’m overweight due to my depression and addiction to eating too much junk food. Personally though, I wouldn’t ever get cosmetic surgery - although I do regularly wax my beard and parts of my body, as I am uncomfortable with the amount of hair I have. And my last statement isn’t necessarily the complete truth (about getting cosmetic surgery), as I’ve considered getting procedures to help reduce my waistline - but I guess my statement is true because ultimately, I haven’t chosen to do them.

03 - UNIT 1.4: My Camera Equipment

1.4 My Camera Equipment

Our second assignment in my course called INDOOR SELF-PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY by photographer Taya Iv, was to compile a list of your photo equipment, which I recently started, as I work to get organized again. So this list here isn’t complete. I also have numerous filters, and a few other lenses not listed here. In addition I have several toy cameras, and a couple of Polaroid type cameras (by Fuji I believe).

DIGITAL CAMERAS: Sony a7rii with Vertical Grip, rx100iii, rx10ii; iPhone 11 Pro.

FILM CAMERAS: Nikon FM2; Mamiya 645, and rz67.

DIGITAL LENSES: FE 85MM F1.4 GM, FE 55MM 1.8 Zeiss; FE 24-70MM 4 Zeiss. 

TRIPODS: Manfrotto Carbon Fibre 190CXPRO4G, 055XPROB (heavier body tripod for daytime long exposures).

LAPTOP: (coming mid-January): DELL XPS 17, i9-11980HK (24MB Cache, up to 5.0 GHz, 8 cores) Processor, Nvidea 3060 6GB Video Card, 17.0" UHD+ (3840 x 2400) Touchscreen Display, 4TB SSD, 32GB Ram. 

SMART DEVICES: iPhone 11 Pro, iPad Pro 2TB 12.9” Display (just arrived!).

SOFTWARE: Adobe Creative Suite PC / iPhone / iPad; Corel Draw, Paintshop Pro; Exposure X7 Bundle; Nik Photo Collection 4.

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK…

02 - UNIT 1.2: Working on a Budget

1.2 Why Working on a Budget Is Amazing

Our second assignment in my course called INDOOR SELF-PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY by photographer Taya Iv, was to consider the following:

What’s bothering you as a photographer (camera equipment, your indoor space, lighting)? What annoying obstacles exist? What things are in your way or exist in your mind as a limitation?

And for me, the answer was simple: the number one thing that I find limiting in my life when it comes to making art is the current state of my living conditions. My own townhome has become littered with stuff from books, magazines to films on DVD, unfinished artworks (such as drawings, paintings, half filled sketchbooks, printed photos and sculptures), to bags of receipts, office supplies, various electronic cords, empty containers I got to sort things into for proper storage, clean juice and sodapop containers, and much more. I had prepped part of the upstairs to paint several years ago but have never finished it. Some of the stuff from upstairs was shifted to my studio space. And in my studio space is another mess with similar items but also camera equipment that’s been spread out onto part of the floor and not put away. It’s caused tension with my strata, and I’ve been too embarrassed to even let them in for routine maintenance of the building exterior - such as the attics, and the furnace.

My elderly Mom hasn’t been too well either in recent years and I’ve spent more time at her place, to help her out, but I’ve also made a mess here - her garage, den and guest bedroom have become very unorganized. It’s led to a huge tension between my Mother and I, which in recent months have turned into moments where things boil over and we end up having horrible fights.

My accumulation of stuff is partly related to my depression. I acquire things as a way of filling a void, but then I get too many things that I’m unable to use them. And it’s not junk - it’s actually nice things. So many beautiful things. They just aren’t put away properly. Which is heartbreaking. It’s almost like the television show HOARDERS, only I’ve never let any perishable food items rot. It’s unorganized, yes, but nothing is rotting, and I don’t have infestations of rats or insects etc. So for me, it’s not that I don’t have things, it’s that I have too many things. My primary love is painting but I haven’t been able to do that in years due to the mess of my place. It’s partly why I’ve turned to more lens based digital art work: because I can do it with a camera and then edit on a laptop or other smart device, anywhere.

In terms of a solution for this - I need to get organized, but it has been incredibly difficult. I make small strides, but fall behind again. Specifically, over the last two years (this fall especially, which saw me hospitalized for a brief period), has been incredibly difficult. Things have stagnated so much. It’s even a part of me that I’ve largely hidden in my subverted selfie project I mentioned in the introduction. I have made some artworks based on these issues, from 2012-15, in a series I called “a simple slight of essence.”

Ultimately, I think I need to try to break the work down by different areas, and create a list of things that need to be done in each area. I could continue documenting my progress through photos and even video. I should start at my Mom’s, then work on my own place.

This was also posted as a subversive selfie for December 25, 2021.

Instructor Feedback…

01 - UNIT 1.1: Course Overview & Summary

1.1 A Summary of this Course

This week I started a course called INDOOR SELF-PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY by photographer Taya Iv. The course description really caught my eye, as I’ve wanted to study more about the history of self portraiture, selfies and how it relates to identity. This course won’t necessarily get too heavy on the theory and history but it will help me work on my technique to help improve my subverted selfie project. Specifically, the course description describes how:

Indoor self-portrait photography is one of the best genres for photographers who want to gain confidence, express themselves, and learn to see potential in seemingly insignificant places. Learning how to photograph yourself can help you as a photographer in general and allow you to empathize with models, confidently break the rules, and take outstanding photographs that accurately define you as an artist.

So I enrolled. And as I’m doing with my different courses now, I’m going to post work I do in this course as I progress in it. The first class’s assignment was to craft a biography, which I did. Like a lot of writing I do, I was quite in-depth as I wanted to express to the course professor where I am at, so she can help push my work. So, without further fanfare, here is my introduction to me, which provides more insight into some of the inspiration behind the self portraiture I’ve done over the last two years:

What’s in a name?

I’m Steve. But what’s really in a name? Wasn’t it Shakespeare who asked - “would a rose by any other name smell just as sweet?” If my parents had named me Thomas, would that change who I am today and the directions I’ve taken in my life? Regardless, my folks named me Steven Robert Han Lee. Why Steven? When I ask my Mom this, her go to answer has always been just because she always liked that name. Wikipedia notes how:

Steven is a common English first name… particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen (Greek: Στέφανος Stéphan), an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; he is widely regarded as the first martyr (or "protomartyr") of the Christian Church.

The article further notes how: 

The name "Stephen" (and its common variant "Steven") is derived from Greek Στέφανος (Stéphanos), a first name from the Greek word στέφανος (stéphan), meaning 'wreath, crown' and by extension 'reward, honor, renown, fame', from the verb στέφειν (stéphein), 'to encircle, to wreathe'. In Ancient Greece, crowning wreaths (such as laurel wreaths) were given to the winners of contests. Originally, as the verb suggests, the noun had a more general meaning of any "circle"—including a circle of people, a circling wall around a city, and, in its earliest recorded use, the circle of a fight, which is found in the Iliad of Homer.

The circle metaphor seems apt in describing my earlier life, when I was much more of a high functioning depressive, working for several nonprofit organizations, where I organized events and even fought corruption that broke out in one of them. In that sense, I was involved with a circle of people trying to make life for the larger circle just a little bit better.

I recently found out that Robert was the name of the groundskeeper of the Williams Lake Stampede grounds where my Mom kept horses and served on the Association’s board. Ultimately, Robert was another person who worked to help a greater circle of people. I remember his wife Rose, who painted oils on canvas. She let me have a go once when I was very young, maybe two or three years old. I remember the feel of the paintbrush in my hand and the palette laid out in front of me, with the remnants of the browns, reds, and dark green. I remember the wood panel walls of the trailer they lived in, and the chiaroscuro light that made the edges of everything I remember feel as though it was out of a dream.

As a teenager, I changed my name to Steven Hanju Lee, to reflect the name of my father. Han was his name here in Canada, and it’s been a part of me since birth. But when he came to Canada in 1952, the customs and immigration officials misheard his name and recorded it as Han Choo Lee, not as Hanju Lee. My Mom and I found this out in the early 90s when his family found those family members who were stuck in the authoritarian dictatorship of North Korea. Each letter that came from them was addressed to “Hanju Lee.” It was something he never corrected customs on in the moment. I guess between having English as a second language (even though he could speak half a dozen), and perhaps growing up with unstable governments you didn’t trust, it might have been easier to just accept and move on. And it ended up being a name he lived with for the rest of his life.

My Fine Arts Background 

Currently, I’m a bachelor of fine arts student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, although my depression has put me in a situation where I’m not even sure I’ll be able to complete my degree. I’ve focussed on lens based work during my degree, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have studied a lot of photography as well as performance art. One of our professors, Ana Black, studied with and was an assistant to performance artist Marina Abramovic. Like a good performance art piece, I try to make sure my own subverted self portraits aren’t too preplanned, and that they feel authentic to the moment I’m experiencing. When Professor Black studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, she got to scan and archive work by Francesca Woodman, who is definitely a hero of mine. She was so brave with the stories she told through each of her photographs. And as a suicide survival myself, I have a small inkling of the kind of anxiety and depression she likely went through which led her to take her own life at the young age of 22. Other heroes of mine include: 

  • Henry Horenstein: who was maybe the first photographer who ever inspired me to turn my camera towards myself after I viewed his HUMANS series, in a project I did for an introductory digital photography course at university;

  • Robert Mapplethorpe: is another photographer I really admire, as he used his self portraits as a way of looking at his identity as a gay man (who was likely gender fluid). I’d like to do more of that - as I came out demipansexual last year and gender fluid / gender queer this year (I go by they / them). With my latest mani pedi I let the aesthetician pick out colours to paint my finger nails; and a week ago I had my armpits waxed for the first time;

  • Scott Schuman (the Sartorialist): who doesn’t specifically shoot self portraits, but what I like a lot about him is how he’s able to approach strangers on the street, strike up conversation and take their photos. Overall, his work is a kind of a subversion of the fashion and modelling worlds, which I appreciate. I got to meet him in 2019, at a book signing, and it wasn’t very busy yet so we got to chat for quite awhile which was really insightful;

  • Cindy Sherman: (who I missed meeting by an hour, on the opening night of a retrospective they had a few years ago at the Vancouver Art Gallery). Sherman too is brave and is absolutely amazing at creating worlds through her portraits. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Sherman has certainly mastered that formula. I also love how you can sometimes see the mechanics in some her early work (as well as in Woodman’s) - like the shutter release cable being held in her hand, with its long cord leading down to the ground and out of sight to one of the sides of the frame;

  • Andy Warhol: and specifically his use of Polaroids, which in their day were kind of an equivalent to how we snap shots so easily on our smart phones today. He’s also famous for the quote about everyone looking for their 15 minutes of fame - which seems more relevant today in the age of social media than ever before.

Why am I here? 

I signed onto this course because I want to find new ways to push my portrayals of myself further. On January 1, 2020, I started a subversive selfie project on my Instagram feed (@steveleeart) to try to present a more honest look at my life. I found myself frustrated looking at the perfectly curated pages of so many friends which often felt like a “best of” look at their vacation and holiday photos. My goal was simple: to post a selfie a day that was authentic to how I was feeling during the moment I shot the photo. I suffer from anxiety, depression, diabetes, and high blood pressure. I’m also overweight and because of my depression I tend to turn to junk food for comfort. I also overspend and as such I’m surrounded by a lot of things I probably don’t need and I’ve had issues keeping my place organized. All of these are things I’ve explored in my subverted selfie project. I’ve also tried to talk about my counselling, and things I’ve done to improve my life. 

On another hand though, part of me acknowledges the idea that my selfies are a part of me yearning for some kind of attention. In her book, THE SELFIE GENERATION, author Alicia Eler notes how “The selfie is largely both an adolescent and celebrity social phenomena, because both categories of people are intensely focused on how they are perceived by others” (15). I was bullied a lot as a teenager, in an age that existed a few years before social media existed as it does today. So there are times that I realize how others may or may not perceive my “project.” Many don’t even realize it is an art project. But then I also straddle that line of whether or not I’m over sharing. Am I feeding my own demons when I express ideas about the depressions that plague me? Overall, I am fairly consistent about remembering to post each day, although there have been chunks of time when I did shoot a photo but didn’t get around to uploading it. This fall I also started to upload the photos from the project to my 500px, Flickr, and VSCO accounts - so they don’t just live on Instagram. With my body issues, I’ve posted some nudes - shots of me from behind - but those can set off the Instagram algorithm alarms, and my account may or may not get deleted with further “violations.” I do appeal each time a photo gets pulled, and usually they get reposted. But still… I’d hate to lose my old posts on that platform. Not so much the photos, as those are backed up, but the text captions I’ve written for many of them are not backed up. You can see my shots here in these Flickr albums:

A few of my favourite things… 

I love movies. I own around 8,000 titles on DVD and Bluray, with a few on VHS. Some of my favourite movies I’ve seen in cinemas this year include WEST SIDE STORY and SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME. It’s hard to chose an all time favourite but Alfred Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW is up there, about an injured photojournalist nonetheless. One of the last films I saw before the pandemic that I loved was A HIDDEN LIFE. So good!

I’m reading more too, and recently finished a great book by Shawn Achor called THE HAPPINESS ADVANTAGE. I also read pretty much everything about creativity and writing by Natalie Goldberg this year (start with WRITING DOWN THE BONES), and I loved May Sarton’s book, JOURNAL OF A SOLITUDE. As a work of nonfiction, it is over 50 years old, but parts of it felt like it could be reflections on today’s social media soaked consumer driven pop culture.

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK…