Idem series

I decided to post a few photos I made last fall -- it's part of a self-portrait (?) series. Essentially it was me wandering around my house naked, setting up a tripod, setting the camera's timer, and posing. They are all c-prints. Some of the color balance is cringeworthy -- I'm so bummed I no longer have access to a color processor :s

I decided to call the series Idem, which is the root for the word "identity." Oddly enough, "idem" means sameness. I photographed myself in situations where my body was mimicking forms in my house (i.e. my neck is the slope of the sink's neck, my back is the broadside of soap); I was living alone at this point, and there was something psychological occurring between myself and my living space. There's an odd melding of self and site that occurs when you live alone for so long. You begin to identify yourself as part of your surroundings...you become what you live with. It's maybe similar to couples who have lived together for a long time, and begin to take on an uncanny resemblance of one another. Or the owner and dog who bear an uncanny resemblance of one another.

I like the anxiety in the photos, and the voyeuristic quality of them...there's the sense that there's a ghostly presence in the house. I showed these photos in a class and one of the comments from another student was that it looks as though someone had been following me around my house, taking these voyeuristic photos, whiiich probably reflects my abnormal paranoia I have of being cased and robbed...

There's also a nice little pun with the word Idem -- Idem is a homophone with "item," which is how I wanted my body to appear, as a mere item. Unfortunately I recently discovered another photographer/conceptual artist who has adopted the moniker "Idem-Item." Damn him.