MIDTERM: Four Surrealist Photographs
IMAGE 01: Fragments of Past and Present
A surrealist self-portrait combining facial features from different time periods. The base image is a recent selfie from September, but the left eye is from 2009, the eyebrow is from 2020 before I began plucking them (a feminine practice in coming-of-age), and the hand with visible scratches from work and gym represents my current self. The plant in the background, photographed in my parents' house, symbolizing my growth and my roots. I color matched through curves, levels, saturation/contrast, and shadows.
IMAGE 02: Feminine Foundations
This composition features a black and white Venetian alleyway where my silhouette has been cut out and displaced, revealing a collage of images of my sister and myself, and my mother and myself. The collage uses reduced color filtering to abstract the details, with a subtle overlay of the original images at 30% opacity to allow facial features to emerge. The vibrant pink flowers emerging from the doorway and throughout the collage are the first flowers I received from my boyfriend, representing blossoming confidence and my evolution of feminine expression.
IMAGE 03: Reflection of Time
A poolside scene where I hold a gold ornate mirror (sourced from Anthropologie) that contains an impossible reflection—my face split three ways like a cracked mirror. The top left section shows me from 2009, the bottom displays my smile and chin from 2012, and the top right features my current appearance. The pool setting, composed of three different angles from my time tanning in Arizona, represents feminine beauty practices and self-presentation.
IMAGE 04: Celestial Bedroom
My current college apartment bedroom transformed through a surrealist interpretation. The ceiling and window have been replaced with a starry scene from "It's a Wonderful Life," my favorite film (where George Bailey's guardian angel is introduced, and he begins a journey discovering the beauty of life itself, his own life, and the people that comprise it, which I can relate to as of recently). The solarize filter applied to the entire image creates an otherworldly atmosphere with dream-like inspiration. The bedroom—an intimate space of rest and reflection, suggesting how our personal spaces contain multitudes of selves and possibilities. This image represents how our present environment is always influenced by our past experiences and future aspirations. Technically, I adjusted the shadows and highlights.
In this series, I explore the duality of growing up female through surrealist self-portraiture that combines elements of my younger and current self. By seamlessly blending facial features from different stages of my life, I create portraits that represent the complex journey of feminine evolution.
These images speak to the tension between preserving childhood innocence and adopting practices of womanhood. As we grow, certain features become subjects of focus, while others remain untouched. The contrast between features from different periods reflects how we selectively maintain aspects of our authentic selves while adapting to the world's expectations.
I wanted to include my mom and sister, whose influence subtly shows through these images. While conventional wisdom suggests younger sisters learn from their older siblings, my life has been the opposite. During my adolescence, I struggled with femininity and self-presentation, harboring insecurities that made me resist traditionally feminine expressions. It was my younger sister—despite a one-year age difference—who helped guide me toward confidence in my identity.
The environments I've chosen—from private spaces like bedrooms to public scenes like poolsides—create contexts that frame these certain contradictions. Each setting represents a stage in my evolution, from childhood innocence to adult identity formation. Even my favorite film, "It's a Wonderful Life," appears in a window, suggesting how our personal narratives are influenced by the stories we cherish.
