Can you see me now?

What is it to really see a face, and what does it tell you?? When I was about 7 or 8, I used to pull out our family album and lie on the floor studying the pictures, turning the heavy creamy bond pages over and over, looking for the story of my family.? I remember asking my mother if the tiny scrunched up faces in the square black and white photos with the scalloped edges were of me or my brothers and was incredulous when she couldn’t remember. How could she not recognize me?? It was only after I had my own children that I realized how much babies of a tender age look alike, and how those early days are a blur.??

But, there were always “tells”.? My mom would study the image and pronounce things like:? “Ah, that must have been your older brother because I remember that outfit I was wearing. I got it for Aunt so-and-so’s wedding.”? Really? I remember thinking, I mean you can remember the outfit, but not the little face in the photo?? Memory is quirky, and in fairness to Mom, I think I can describe every favorite dress I’ve ever owned with an eye for detail that would shock my children, whose names I occasionally forget.

When I have a spare afternoon in a museum, I head up to the portrait gallery.? I like to look at all the faces and wonder what stories they tell.? Did they have the same joys and struggles, is the human condition constant over time?? Rembrandt's self-portraits are my favorites–the original selfie artist.? Can you look at Rembrandt’s first selfie and identify him in his last?? Yes, and no, and yes, if you look closely.? Is it his facial features that are his “tell”?? Or is it his unflinching gaze and signature black hat, shading him in profile until the very end, when he removes it because there is nothing left to hold back, it’s all been revealed. Your perspective changes over time, and so, Rembrandt reminds us, does your image.

The first time I ever saw CCTV was on vacation with my parents in London.? It left such an impression on me that I can remember exactly what I was wearing (pink sweater, black tights, black flats) when I noticed the camera for the first time. It startled me back then and made me feel vulnerable.? I don’t have the same reaction today.? If I am running through Heathrow (or any other public place), I accept that cameras are an integral part of what makes that passage safe, but I also want reassurance that simply because my photo is captured for safety, it’s not used to police me, track me, or profile me in ways that would startle me all over again.

Human nature has not changed much since Rembrandt’s time, as we too share our images willingly, publicly, and often indiscriminately.? Everywhere we upload them to apps, online albums and social media platforms.? It's tempting to think we are still somehow in control of them, even with privacy settings, but we’re not.? If I step onto the pavement in London, or anywhere else these days, everyone on the pavement with me is a photographer and publisher. My face is probably on tourist cameras and in unknown phones and Facebook pages, and surely is on those of my relatives, friends, and colleagues.? Where they go after that, who knows?? It seems my image is increasingly beyond my control.

I wonder if we are putting our images out there to be viewed, copied and even manipulated, does this dilute the impact of the public collection of our image in an airport, concert stadium, or office building? Is private image collection ever really private?? I am curious about the contradictions between how we feel when we freely share our image publicly and when we use technologies that capture them to help keep us safe.? What are the contours of those contradictions in a society where imagery is everywhere????

Given my fascination with images, it seems inevitable that I would work in the video surveillance industry where we are awash in them and the responsibility they engender. We create systems and solutions to capture them, blur them, suppress them, search them and the “tells” associated with them–a pink sweater, backpack, sunglasses.? The photos captured by our cameras keep people safe, but they also reveal and expose.? I think about these contradictions often and how I feel when someone else snaps my image to put it out for all to see.? Does it even out?? In the endless stream of faces swirling around us, what should we make of it?? I am not sure, but maybe if I scrunch up my face in public it will look like all the others.? Maybe my mother will recognize it, or at least the outfit that I am wearing.