What Are We Looking at?

While suspended in amniotic fluid we can’t use our lungs to breathe air. Oxygen is provided via the umbilical cord. As we are born, the pressure in the birth canal pushes fluid out of our lungs and prepares them for our first breath.

This moment between a liquid and air environment is reflected (no pun intended) in Reyes-Newell’s work. For her portraits she posed her models with their faces only partially submerged and photographed from a favorable angle within the water so that the other half of the face would be reflected. Had the surface of the water been perfectly still, this could have provided a near perfect symmetrical recreation of the two halves into a whole.

Since most people’s faces are far from perfectly symmetrical, this could have led to a series of the two faces we potentially present under such circumstances and an exploration of what the dissimilarities reveal about how we interpret faces. This experiment was conducted and published by photographer Alex John Beck. He used a studio setting to avoid the trouble of having to shoot underwater and achieved more accurate results. BuzzFeed also lets you experiment with images of fifteen celebrities to see what they would look like if their faces were symmetrical.

How Can the Images Be Interpreted?

Instead, Reyes-Newell let the movement of the water’s surface distort the other half into something less defined and more left to chance. Fashion designer Coco Chanel is quoted for having said, “Nature gives you the face you have at twenty. Life shapes the face you have at thirty. But at fifty you get the face you deserve.”

This brings us back to nature versus nurture questions and, eventually, our own responsibility for our destiny. As if to underscore that point, Reyes-Newell added milk around the faces, as she set up her portraits in the pool, the first food nature intends for us to ingest. As it dissolved in the water it made the faces appear as if they were surrounded by a storm: the storm of the circumstances of our lives, the storm of our own decisions, and all of the cloudiness inbetween (Figure 11.2).

FIGURE 11.2 Untitled. © Adriana Reyes-Newell

Where does this storm begin: in a previous life; way back in the primordial soup; how can we possibly know? But rather than feeling frustrated by this, we may have to accept that both circumstance and purpose drive us simultaneously. The religious and philosophical debate about the relationship of the preordained vs free will is a subtext in Reyes-Newell’s images, compelling us to reflect on those fundamental questions that self-awareness insistently thrusts upon us.

Conclusion

Frustrating as the unanswerable may be, use it to fuel your imagination and enjoy the ride and where it takes you. Use the apparent echoes from the past and the future, which provide us with the illusion of stability for a moment.

These moments are powerful in these portraits of others where we may, for just a moment, find ourselves, again and again.