Photographic ways of seeing: corporeal defamiliarizations within the mirror medium

Abstract

This visual essay investigates two photographic techniques to challenge pre-existing notions of the human body that are derived from people’s locally consistent set of beliefs about bodily proportions, shapes and functions. These techniques centre around the mirror as the medium to investigate peculiar visual representations that take aim at normative concepts of what constitutes the human. The essay includes selective images of defamiliarized bodies that the author has photographed within a studio environment and that are applied within the Freudian context of the Uncanny to convey how humans seek familiarity, which is inherited through lived experience as a form of solace in the face of unfamiliarity. The mirror, with its paradoxical nature as a device of reflection, captures both the reality and its representation in a single image, or of presence and absence, allowing for the defamiliarization of the body. The essay provides an explanation of how this is achieved, demonstrating the mirror’s potential to expand visual representation beyond the limitations of the body itself.