The Private Self
Where is the self that only we can see? The late eighteenth-century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham theorized that we interact as if always being observed by an unseen watchman in a social model he called “the panopticon.” If we can escape the surveillance of this all-seeing eye and find some safe space from the trauma of constant observation, perhaps then we become a self that is more “authentic.” Therein lies the problem with private portraiture: can an artist capture this private self? Inherent in any observation is a lack or desire; even when we see ourselves, we recognize that the world contained in a photograph or silvered glass is a mere image and cannot encompass all that we are. As the toddler discovers when held up to a mirror, portraiture of the private self reminds us that the ghosts enclosed in an image are not the world.
