100faces

I began my 100faces project in January 2009 in reaction to the online social networking trend that is Facebook.

I was struck by some of the profile pictures offered up by my Facebook friends and began creating portraits,

or rather, what feels to me more like meditations, from them at random.

In contrast to the often self-deprecating or off-hand feel the pictures have when originally posted to the world, my pieces are layered and dense. They enlarge, ponder, and rework the tiny digital images. I spend hours creating each portrait despite the fact the original pictures were made with the click of a shutter.

Using small sheets of glass cut to fit my scanner, I prepare the surface with a thin layer of paint. I lay this ‘window’ over the enlarged profile picture then begin scratching away the paint to reveal the image below and form a new one in the painted glass. Once the new portrait is complete, I scan the glass and upload the image into an online photo album on my Facebook page. I then tag the image with the subject’s name, which automatically shoots a notification to the subject, all of their friends, all of my friends, and all previous 100faces subjects that a new photo has been uploaded.

Through this process, my ‘meditations’ and their subsequent re-entry into the digital format, restore a labored, human element back into the social digital framework of Facebook, making my social experiences there deeper and more meaningful. The 100faces project is my attempt to consider both the limits and the possibilities offered by the micro relationships we form through on-line social networks. My re-worked portraits are studies of people I’ve either become reconnected to, friends I see with some regularity, or random people I’ve met online through other friends.

All these images are posted and shown together in the order I do them. When I do portraits of people I haven’t seen or heard from in 20 years, people who now have beards and babies, I remember them as they were and

in return they become more real, more human to me than just a bunch of pixels or a posting. What’s more, the phenomenon of cueing up new and old friends in the equalizing space of Facebook is like watching some strange tapestry of my life being assembled. Each person has a different vision of who I am. In this way, 100faces has affected the way I look at myself as well.