Read Time 4 minutes
Visual essay: Black Narcissus
We’re constantly being surveilled and observed, most of all by our own selves. Whether it’s on or offline, the way we negotiate our own image is becoming more toxic than ever, with perfected versions of ourselves being continually projected back at us, but feeling increasingly out of reach and unobtainable.
This visual essay, curated by Darklight, features work that speaks to this conundrum, in haunting, uncanny ways.
“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!”
From A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!”
From A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Even the greatest stars
Find their face in the looking glass
She fell in love with the image of herself
And suddenly the picture was distorted
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