Personification

Personification has always been somewhat of a fascination for me. The human brain operates by relating information to a database. It makes sense that in trying to understand the world around us we draw comparisons with what we know about ourselves.

This process involves projecting human characteristics onto animals and inanimate objects. It is also possible to suggest that we apply familiar notions of the self to other people. This perhaps does not satisfy the definition of personification. The term ”selfification” may be more appropriate.

Although the photograph is a very recent invention, it has already cemented itself into our familiarity as an object and as a concept. Its ability to capture the moment is unrivalled and this is particularly true in the case of the person as the subject.

It is my argument that through its close relationship with portraiture, the photograph itself prompts an unconscious tendency for us to project a personification (or indeed selfification) onto the subject of the image.

I hope to draw attention to this behaviour such that people might become more aware of how their mind perceives a photograph, an inanimate object or another person.

What does it mean for us to compare almost everything to ourselves? Are we hoping to better understand the other for the sake of this other, or so we can be content in understanding for ourselves?

Tunnels seem to personify unhappiness.