True fictions : an investigation of identity, narrative, and photography

This research project explores the narrative potential of the photographic medium, and the ways in which photography translates reality and fiction. As an aesthetic object, a photograph is an iconographic form not unlike an open-ended story, which in its dualism incites the viewer's imagination and curiosity. I have intended to test the complex translations of reality and truth within the photographic image. Taking into consideration the continuum of photography's history, the work of the artists who have explored the terrain of constructed photography, and in a visual and/or conceptual way inspired my project, and my personal desire to explore the duplicate truth of photography, I have tried to find new ways to visually reconfigure the aspect of truth within fiction. Additionally, I have sought a new approach to the issues of identity using the self-portrait technique and the theatrical practice of transformation and role-playing. Combining documentary and staged self-portrait techniques, my aim was to produce an imagery, which presents the viewers with an open-ended narrative where fantasies and deceptions blend. I have employed photography's mechanical and semi-objective nature to produce a realistic representation of the construct. Relying on photography's ability to generate believable fictions, I have chosen to participate in my images as a pretended character. I have set my performance against the real life street milieu, and blended the pretence directly with the element of chance, hoping to emulate the immediate reality with the utmost veracity. As a result, the images contain both the naturalness of a documentary photograph and the theatricality of the construct. They suggest the 'real', but their effect is, essentially, always tentative and ambiguous. The intent of the imagery is to extend the interpretation and symbolic potential of a photographic narrative, and to encourage the viewer to search beyond the obvious. Through the fluid mix of reality and fiction my imagery invokes the proximity of truth and deceptiveness, encouraging the viewers to enter into a dialogue on the identity subsumed in the instantaneous reality of the street. Represented in the straightforward manner of street photography, the images are stimuli and evocations, reflecting on the discourse between the real and imaginary, the personal 'truth' and intended deceptiveness.