sadandbeautiful (Sarah)
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As plain as the nose on your face.
How well do we know our own face?
How many times do we look in a mirror?
How many photographs have been taken of us; blank eyed in a passport, smiling at a wedding, uninhibited loon in a bar? As children we drew our portraits as giant ovals with frozen, precise features. As teenagers we agonized over a flawed complexion, crooked teeth, the angle of a nose or jaw. We accept how it all fits together, how it works to let in air and sustenance, sounds and smells, colours and light. With all that how well do we know our own face?
This is Sarah’s face. I suspect she knows it pretty damn well. Today’s expression could be called a grimace, a delicate word for such a pained face. Sarah takes self portraits, and in this, her fourth year of taking one every day she is photographing just her wonderful, expressive face. So she has learned what other people see when she looks scared, or sad, or sneaky. She knows how she looks when she is picking her nose, or gouging her fingers into her eye sockets. She knows the elasticity of her mouth and where the lines are deepest.
Forty three muscles have been identified in the human face, but it is not unusual to have fewer. The ones which control the areas around our eyes, across the forehead, along the cheeks, under the mouth and above the mouth leading down to the chin are all however universal . They make it possible to relay messages anywhere in the world. Throughout history, irrespective of culture, language, or social class, a smile signifies pleasure as clearly as a grimace indicates pain. Unless you are Sarah, in which case a grimace can be nothing more than face one hundred and fifty seven out of three hundred and sixty five.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, Rachel Irving and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
