Speaking of Photography
LAIS PONTES: BORN NOWHERE
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"Lais and Tie's Julias" © Lais Pontes
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In her social media art project "Born Nowhere", artist and photographer Lais Pontes creates unique, fictitious characters which begin with her own self-portrait as the initial framework. She further modifies the portraits via digital techniques to transform the facial characteristics, creating multiple alternative personalities. Posting the self-portraits on Facebook, she invites users to share their thoughts, comments and interpretation of the characters, creating a flexible interaction framework and an unbounded socio-cultural experience. The users' comments about each character inform and help to create a unique persona with its own name, life and characteristics. Bringing together comments from Facebook users, the artist constructs the character's bio. The description of each new character is influenced by what psychoanalysts term "projection," that is, the viewer ascribes background, reality and fantasies onto others. According to theories of personality, each individual is the result of the interplay of three factors: what the person is, what he or she wants to be, and what others believe this person is. What one sees is what one wants to see.
We hope you'll join us for this special Saturday edition of Speaking of Photography! And don't forget about APG's current call for entry.......
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