This Is Who I Am
To be completely honest, I never really take pictures of myself. Instead, people would take pictures of me, and I could go along with it. Before high school, I was always the shy kid that never really liked to show my face to the public. I hated pictures, and I hated them even more when I saw them printed out and being passed out at a Chinese New Years celebration at my grandparent’s house. Now, high school came around, and there was sudden change. I started to meet people. Meeting people turned into me making friends, like the one below.
This is Branden, arguably one of my best friends. He, along with others, helped me bring out who I really was inside. Not the shy, hide in the closet person, but the relatively outgoing one. I then started to discover the things that I appreciated in life. Photography is one of the many things that I embraced, as it proved to be one way that I could express myself. It also provided me with an outlet(stress relief, but I always used this word) during the stressful times that I would encounter during high school.
Moving on to the main point, whenever I see a picture of myself(now) I always see aspects of my identity. Whether it be a picture of me smiling and having a great times with friends or making weird faces that sometimes make me cringe with embarrassment, the picture captured a moment where I was being me. I could say that every picture taken of me(besides portraits for school… yeah, no) captured who I truly am. I am silly sometimes, I’m weird(I embrace it), and most of all I love to have a great time with all who are around me.
IF we are looking for features of identity such as “Origins, Race, Ethnicity, Socio-economic status, Sexuality, Gender”, I’d say that the pictures of me would show aspects of each feature, some more pronounced than others. I am a middle class, Asian- American Male(Chinese/Japanese/ other nitbits), living in a consumerist society ran(mostly) by large corporations that don’t always take the suffering society into consideration. How can we see all of this? I have many luxuries such as expensive cameras and formal clothes that many other people may not have. Just by looking at me, you can tell that I am Asian. I am a guy and I’m heterosexual, but those things are harder to identify by just looking at a picture. If it were me, I’d rather not assume what people’s gender is or what their sexual orientation is, based on a photo.
With all of this identity stuff about who I am and what I am, we can only ask why. Why is this significant? Well, in short, this is me. Each picture of me, that I am aware of, captures who I purely am. When others see me in pictures, they are getting a little glimpse of who Jared A. Huey really is. My parents did not get the same things that I got, nor did they get the same opportunities that I got. They were taught to be more reserved and quiet(that’s how it goes in Chinese/Japanese families). They grew up in households that were below what is considered middle class. The reason why I am how I am, is that both of my parents vowed, before I was born, that they would provide a better life for their child that they didn’t have. Then, I showed up out of the blue, and I was that child.
I have been keeping my eyes open while attending my community site. Some things can be seen, and some cannot. We can see the students that are trying to assert their masculinity, those who may “have it all”, and also overwhelming happiness(among other things). What we may not see is whether all of this is true. Maybe they are trying to prove their masculinity because they may be embarrassed of who they truly are. Maybe they are trying to flash all of their expensive objects, to mask the struggles they may be financially facing. Maybe, they aren’t really happy. That is the problems with the assumptions when we see selfies, pictures, or people in public. We really do not know who they are and what they are. They know who and what they are. We, as individuals, know who and what we are.
