| girl before a mirror is an archive of
black and white self-portraits amassed over about 7 years. The archive
contains 1585 items, and is comprised of, firstly, a set of file cards
and secondly, a searchable website/database. Each image has been catalogued
according to a personal system that denotes the city in which the image
was made, the series number in that city, the chronological frame number
of the image (i.e. the image number in the series), the physical frame
number (i.e. that which appears on the negative), and a designation of
the year during which the image was made. A descriptor of the contents
of each image has been written, and also appears on the file card.
The form of the archive has special importance
in relation to photography. Photography has long been paired with data,
particularly in the creation of the culture of surveillance we live in
today. Beginning with Francis Galton's composite photography in identifying
criminal, psychological and racial types, and with Alphonse Bertillon's
combinations of mugshots, physiognomic measurements, and statistical data,
the photographic archive has played no impartial role in defining concepts
of 'normality' and 'deviancy.' I am particularly moved by the multiple
effects of the photographic archive to create firstly, a culture of people
seen, and secondly, a culture of seeing people. We are ideologically defined,
in this sense, by what we learn we are not, through our ability to look,
identify and disavow.
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