Portrait
This image represents my earliest awareness of self-representation. This photo was taken when I was about 10 years old. It was taken as part of a class project, in which we, as American students, were getting pen pals from Ireland. One of the first steps in the project was the trading of photos between students. I can distinctly remember our teacher asking us to carefully consider what photo we would choose to use. Honestly, the idea of careful consideration struck me as strange. At 10, I thought a photo was a photo…was a photo. Then, the teacher explained that this photo was an opportunity for us to do more than just show what we looked like, but also a means for explaining a little bit about ourselves. I immediately began to see the activity in a new light. Our family had recently gotten a new puppy, which was to be, more or less, my dog. The sense of responsibility I felt regarding this puppy was very significant to me at 10 years old. I believe this responsibility gave me a new sense of identity; specifically, I felt like I was really growing up. The inclusion of this puppy was a very deliberate addition to this portrait. As an aside, the inclusion of the other dog was based on a 10 year-old’s idea of fairness. Thinking about it now, this knowledge adds another layer of interpretation to the image. At 10, the concept of fairness must have been very important to me. Presumably, the second dog would not have expressed much disappointment about not being featured in the photo. Although I cannot remember being consciously aware of how important the concept of fairness must have been in my day-to-day 10 year-old life, there is clear evidence of this in the image. Funny, but I now have a new understanding of just how representative this image is of me at 10 years old. It contains both a deliberate portrayal of how I felt I was growing up, and an unintentional representation of my idealistic value structure.