Gillian Wearing

I finally came to the somewhat obvious realization that maybe the reason I become so obsessed with my family's heritage and and with my mother and grandmother is because it is a sort of self-portrait. I focus so much on what my mother and grandmother were like at my age because maybe it will give me some insight into myself. Even though I don't ever use myself in my photography, I do see myself in it. Maybe what I've been struggling with is that no one else is seeing the "me" part of my work. This is a photograph of Gillian Wearing dressed up and mimicking an old picture of her grandmother. The reference to early photography is obvious, but does she actually look like her grandmother? I have no idea. I don't. But, My grandma and I are practically the same person in terms of personality and character traits. I don't think there's anyone else I would rather be like.

families are weird

so weird. it makes sense that i look like my mom, and that my brother looks like my dad, but then why do we look like the same person with different haircuts? and its weird how it skips around, like my sister looks like my grandmother but neither of our parents, and my cousin looks like our grandfather but his brother doesn't even look like he belongs in the family. and how do i look like a step-great-something that im not even sure is really related to me? also it's weird that my family used to do all of these crazy embarrassing things and i thought they were the stupidest and most annoying people on the planet but now those things make me laugh and i even sort of brag about them. and it's weird that you can be the most selfish person in the world and really not care at all about anyone else, but you'd take a bullet for family in a heartbeat and not think twice about it. weird.