The photo is taken by American photographer Diane Arbus. Arbus’s subjects varied from ordinary people to marginals in society. However, her purpose remains the same, to capture “the gap between intention and effect.” (Arbus& Israel, 2011). She observed the subtle conflict in her subjects’ behavior, the gap between the image they want people to know about themselves and the image people know about them. (Arbus& Israel, 2011) And through her camera, she captured the “exactitude,” which she considered the fleeting moment of how the subjects truly are, not how they consider themselves nor others’ impressions of them. (Arbus& Israel, 2011) Arbus is neither the humanist to recall people to show concern for problems of modern society nor the voyeur to trespass on others’ souls. In her lens, there is no filter to make the viewer sympathize with the subjects’ oddness or anxiety toward society; the only thing we can view is the reflection of ourselves as outsiders.
Through Arbus’ “lens,” I can sort out some of my thoughts on social media platforms like Instagram and better understand Erving Goffman’s theory about self-presentation. Moreover, I hope I can reason my feeling about social media platforms like Instagram through sociological and aesthetical perspectives.
In Erving Goffman’s book, The presentation of self, he brought up the concept that people have both expressions that they give and those they give off. In other words, impressions that the individual intends to produce are communicated, but with the latter, the audience receives impressions that were not intended to be given. Those putting effort into posting Instagram posts, either for commercial or personal purposes, are contributing to building up a specific impression and hoping others to believe it. It is undoubtedly an intentional action and could take significant time, from choosing the target audience, understanding your existing audience, analyzing data, editing photos, or simply working on the texts. Applying Goffman’s Dramaturgical theory to the context, Instagram is the “frontstage” where individuals in society perform the identity they wish the audience to see. And the “backstage” is where they put efforts into preparing their identity and hide the facts they do not want to show on the front stage.
And I would like to build Arbus’ viewpoint based on Goffman’s theory to better phrase my feeling about using Instagram and observing other users’ posts, activities, and the gap I experienced from knowing someone presents entirely different identities online and offline. Of course, it is normal for people to create a slightly different identity online because we all have our standards of ideality. However, sometimes I’m too “defocusing” from reality, yet everything I see is so real. I never think it’s something negative, but I also realize the importance of media literacy because there’s the possibility that, in certain contexts, some people intentionally manipulate social media to scheme or attain specific goals. It is tough to see the backstage of everything presented on Instagram, and even if someone would like to share the B-side, it’s not necessarily the truth.
Many critics of Arbus are about condemning how she manipulated the edgy characters she shot and how she exploited them for her own gratification. But as I wrote in the beginning, Arbus did select her subject and might target those unordinary expressions. However, what she did is simply capture the exactitude in those individuals because, maybe for her, it’s meaningless to shoot those “well-wrapped” emotions. But at the same time, the exactitude she thought is merely her exactitude; the gap remains.
The story behind Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park:
Collin Wood (the boy’s name), son of the Wimbledon tennis champion, recalled that fear played a big part in his childhood. (Lubow,2017) Besides, his parents split up at the time, which made him even more bewildered. (Lubow,2017:317) Nevertheless, Arbus knew nothing about Collin’s background. When Arbus took Collin as her subject, she captured the gap between his furious facial expressions and the frustration of the lonely child. ?
Reference:
Arbus, D & Israel, M. (2011). Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph: Fortieth-Anniversary Edition (Anniversary ed.).Aperture.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group.
Lubow, A. (2017). Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer (Illustrated ed.).Ecco.
Sontag, S. (1977). On photography. New York :Farrar, Straus and Giroux
It’s an interesting conept that maybe the ”mask” that people done online reveals the core of who somebody is. Through knowing what people want you to percieve them as, you get a very intimate view on their insecurities and strenghts. Some food for thought, I suppose…