Juror's Statement:
Self portraits can be fraught. They can expose something other than what the artist intended. The most successful portraits submitted to Mirror, Mirror I suspect, did just that. They dealt with pregnancy, death, rebirth, violence, fear, heartbreak, loneliness, the supernatural, sexual identity, falling in and out of love, loss of virginity, and ironically, the loss of self. The camera allows a kind of scrutiny that can show one how they feel, whether it be conscious or not
The less effective pictures submitted, tackled some fascinating ideas like wrestling with ones self, being ones own grandfather, and hiding from ones self, but the ideas were stronger than the images.
The weakest pictures were over-produced, over-photo shopped, mixed media, shadows and reflections, snapshots, and jokes that weren’t funny.
In almost all cases I found that the titles of the photographs were too literal. They tried to explain what the artist was suffering which had the deleterious effect of making me, the viewer, feel that the mystery was gone. Good titles are always challenging to find, but without them we aren’t free to have our own interpretations which can be myriad.
Amy Arbus
Chair Portrait #5, 2014, Archival Pigment Print, 24"x36"
Smoke Portrait #1, 2014, Archival Pigment Print, 24"x36"