Add as Friend
Linked Internet Cafe, 1a Fairview Avenue Lower, Fairview, Dublin 3.

Add as Friend is a collection of images taken from social networking sites to examine why people portray themselves the way they do. It is one of eleven exhibitions around the city by Third Year Photography students. for more information on the exhibitions log on to www.hi-visphotography.com and for information on my exhibition you can also log on to www.christineredmond.com







Do you have a virtual self? If you do, You're not alone.


Facebook has more than 60 million active users, and continues with 250,000 new registrations per day. MySpace has more than 110 million monthly active users around the globe. Bebo has 2.5 million page views per month. Within this social phenonomen images have an important role to play. People make ther first impression through their profile picture. If users look good, look fun, look popular will others be more inclined to add them as a friend?


Through my exploration and appropiation of others¡ profile pictures, I want to discover how and why people portray themselves in a certain way. Is there a common thread repeated in each individual picture? I want to ask you - the viewer - to look at people a little more curiously.

“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence . . . truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”

—Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition
of The Essence of Christianity


Something that appeared in an essay I had to read in college. Call me a nerd - I don't care -it struck me cos it's not just true for pictorial images it's true for nearly everything that is social in some aspect.

People.

I use to think I was one of those annoyingly happy enthusiastic optimists that 'loved to meet new people'. No. Well if I ever ever was, it's no longer the case. I find that you (and by 'you' I am actually referring to mysefl) only are attracted to new people because they're NEW. They're intriquing, shrouded in a veil of mystery, alluring, full of potential, of possibilites, because they don't know you it allows you the chance to be who you want to be. It's all caught up on appearance. Appearence is the very first thing that strikes you, obviously. One fugative glance and a number of judegments and assumptions are made. It's inevitable. Our initial view of a person is immediately s translated into verbal assumptions in our mind. So it is more often than not it is the appearnce of someone new that draws you in. They are a representation of themselves? Maybe that statement/question leaves a bit to be desired but you get my drift. Anyway back to the point.....You see what you want to see in a sense and you feel yourself being pulled toward these new people that you admire. BUt very very fast the novelty fades. Because in actual fact they're not new.. they're just the same wankers you use to like (until you got to know them) only with a different appearence (or a similar one - as in you have a type- which is scarey cos it means you keep making the same mistakes over and over again). If you get to know somebody how can they still retain the same mysterious aura they originally had? After a day or a night, a weekend or a week, a month, a year, whatever the intrique is generally lost. Either that or it's changed into paranoia. People disappoint. Over and over again. I disappoint myself so I'm not pointing fingers, well I am actually, but I do accept I'm a hypocrit but then again I only believe an argument is valid if it contains contradictions. So anyway you get to know this person and the more you know them the more your interest wanes or theirs or both. People lie. All the time. It's all perception. Theres nothing new about these people your meeting, they're all a bunch of posers or ski-masters or just plain dull which is probably worse. Dull dull dull. New people, they're an illusion. hiding behind an fringe ( or skinny jeans clutching a crying guitar). What happens when your swept away with the illusion of something.... it ends with a sad face painted on by disillusioned brushes. Another thing to remember - the people who tell you who they 'really' are while on drugs in the early hours of a weekend moring are not the people that they are on a wednesday afternoon waiting for the bus. In fact the person they were on drugs was probably closer to the essence of themselves than their day to day appearance of themselves.

But there is some hope I guess, because if you don't tire of them or vice versa then obviosuly there is something between you that is true They become a true friend or a true love.

But truth is very rare.

So I'm not looking forward to meeting new people. I'm expecting the worst. And for a person who believes in the power of thought, this isn't the best idea in the world. But isn't it better than being constantly disappointed? Then when one day someone new is still shiny and exciting after months of playing I'

I don't care if my credibility is lost forver. I am diggin' Avril.

I know some people have wondered whats goin' on, so I'm gunna explain. It started out just as me laughing at her over and over again, watching girlfriend and listening to the lyrics, so bad and therefore so funny. How can she be serious? How could she possibly be expecting people to take her seriously with lyrics like that? but then it hit me. A Revelation.

My scorn was disolving and taking the form of, dare-i-say-it, admiration. Maybe just maybe there was a hidden message behind this 'bubble-gum pop'.

One review described it as 'a swaggering, bitchy empowerment anthem that sees bad Avril tangle with her distinctly more geeky counterpart ('cause she's 'like, so whatever') for the affections of her current squeeze. It's confident, though at times complacently arrogant lyrics typify the standpoint Lavigne's taken as regards The Best Damn Thing'.

But i saw further than this.
The whole thing could possibily be sattire. Her voice a dig at comtemporary social behaviour in adolesence. Perhaps she really is taking the piss, out of our fans, her country, her culture and her music contemporaries. I mean isn't girlfrien'd video a little similar to pink?? coincidence or deliberate attempt at poking fun at the queen of poking fun? could be a battle between the 'alternative' princesses of pop.

Or perhaps girlfriend is trying to lay out a message here for all of us. She could be trying to attract the attention of those of us who try to aspire to become people we are not? could her three personalities in her video be a depiction of humanities battle to accept ourselves, a depiction of her constant struggle to change in order to conform? And in the end by not being true to ourselves, or not wanting or doing the right thing we sabotage our own relationships with those we love?

Is girlfriend a classic morality tale, battling with the fatal flaws of humankind; anger, jealousy, rashness etc.

I will admit to my new found appreciation of avril. I am not afraid to say i dig her. Because I fear a rejection of girlfirend could indeed represent a deeper rejection of our own selves.