“A photograph is the perfect medium for projecting one’s ideas, assumptions, opinions, and beliefs onto a stranger especially when there’s little to no information provided about the person in the image. Such projection offers fertile ground for every manner of bias and discrimination
— Gioncarlo Valentine
Photographs By
Jalen Joshua Williams
Typography by
Shakthi Hari Narayanasamy Venkataraman
Jalen Joshua Williams
Typography by
Shakthi Hari Narayanasamy Venkataraman
Through a Looking Glass invites viewers to do more than look, it asks them to consider who they see in the images, and why. Inspired by Charles Cooley’s “Looking Glass Self” theory, Cooley proposed that we come to know ourselves through the perceptions of others, suggesting that perception doesn’t just reflect reality, it creates it. But these reflections are often distorted by bias, fantasy, and inherited narratives, meaning we view others much more through projection than through truth.
Images in this world are keyholders to these projections. They carry not only the subject’s likeness, but also the viewer’s assumptions, memories, fears, and desires. In that split-second between seeing and interpreting, meaning is constructed and often, misconstructed. Photography becomes a site where personal histories and social scripts collide, revealing unconscious tension between the viewer and the viewed.