For five years, I’ve been given the opportunity to enrich my general knowledge, to find and develop the best, the most appropriate means of expressing myself. I’ve been learning various techniques like graphic design, engraving, drawing, illustration, video… I’ve chosen photography because it soon appeared to me as evidence, that I have a soft spot with this medium.
Now, I’m presenting a project principally composed of photographs and texts; intimacy and modesty through photography. I’ m working on the relationship between the self and the surrounding. So, I want, in my end of curriculum, to give evidence of one experience which in my own life seemed particularly intense to me. I’ve conceived it like an itinerary from intimacy to modesty.
Intimacy is the most profound, innermost part, commonly kept hidden to others. Modesty, its interior edge, can be defined as being the feeling of self-respect. I understand our intimacy as non-impermeable because it justifies itself by the existence of an around oneself. In this way, it’s this intimacy, in my view, communicating and poetic, which constitutes the theme and base of my application. Thus, the profound intimacy is poetry because it gets so far under the skin, into the skin, it resounds inside. Intimacy is an original experience.
Around me, and because I feel it, I observe with attention in this sensitive receptacle which is intimacy, this virtue which is inherent to it, the modesty. It appears to me, admittedly as permitting withdrawal, the background and the saving exile, but also the openness for the right communication, essential to the magnification of oneself. If intimacy can be a behavior, it includes likewise openness, communication of positive attention and respect. Modesty is, as a result, the emotional support, even in touching and physical affection.
In order to carry out my project, I tried to specify what is, in the generality and the singularity of my understanding, a non-hermetic intimacy, which is experienced further than our own self-sufficient knowledge. I experienced my own knowledge by re-designing the common construction of self disclosure and intimacy.
I can describe self disclosure as the act of revealing personal information to others, and also as the fact of involving oneself in a relationship. Intimacy is referring here to the depth of exchange between two people, or two things, which implies comprehension and, at least, a deep form of acceptance. Either way, the main thing is dialogue, as well as certain devoutness. Therefore, an intimate encounter reveals something in a sensitive manner. I am convinced the kind of experience, the kind of knowledge one gets with modesty cannot be duplicated differently. The physical life wants the spirit; likewise the spiritual life wants articulation and flexibility. I know this because I hear it in the words I read, in things I see, in discussions I have with people. There are people who defend themselves against being carried away by, what I express as a transcendent intimacy, thus depriving, in my opinion, themselves of an essential aspect of the experience. But there are others who welcome the transport that experience provides. It is a spiritual sustenance, a way of transforming thinking or thoughts, a method of transfiguration. When people correspond in kind, by the ecstatic experience, it’s an honor to reality. Asceticism begins the movement to make room for detachment, for tact in communication.
“ If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head was taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know. Is there any other way ? ” Emily Dickinson
We can recognize true poetry, the interrelationship by extremity, the actual emotional and physical intensity, of the response we give to the world. We are able to trust our own interpretation. We have to be more surprised and to be stunned, and everyday life can give birth to metaphorical meanings and forms. All things which touch us and can be comprehended with our whole being are the dearest friends of the soul.
Intimacy is directly influenced by our own contemplation. So, reading the common world, and appreciating it is for me an act of immense intimacy and of intimate immensity. I try to access the world with modesty. It activates my inner life, carries me to another place, making me unconsciously distance myself from my own self. My imagination loves reverie, the daydreaming ability and interpretation of the mind is set in motion by images, by words.
We have to stay awake, to keep our waking consciousness open to our world, to open ourselves up to the world. Self disclosure is a vital component of intimacy, and it’s related to greater emotional involvement, fulfillment and satisfaction in relationships.
Finally, I suggest what is essential for intimacy is in the actual encounter: the process of revelation rather than the fact revealed. For me, the most important thing is to stay, in daily life, in this dynamic research of truth, authenticity and exactness. Moreover we work in this way, we evolve. If there is one thing that I’ve learned during my studies in this art school, and that I must retain, it’s the ecstatic, spiritual life.
