Musing on Authenticity

Recently, I was assigned to produce an alternate self-portrait using Photoshop. The idea was to portray at least three different sides of myself in one realistic image. The assignment was an impossibility from the start. To realistically portray myself three times within the same image and make it appear like one realistic photograph that just so happen to be taken by some candid force would require cloning procedures to start the moment I was conceived. And yet, here I was doing exactly just that. Cloning myself into a single realistic image as close as I can get with what little Photoshop skills I had.

The next part of the assignment couldn’t be more timely. I was to write an artist statement validating or invalidating the authenticity of the image and/or its intent. I went the scientific angle, invalidating the image as real.

My little story of an assignment is part of a bigger question that has been asked since the days of Rembrandt. How can something be authentic and true in an era where even that is questioned in a court of law? We have authors making up true stories in the same manner advertisers bend the truth about their products usefulness to society. Artists are getting credit for pieces they never even touched unless they just so happen to put their name on it. So what is true anymore and what is false? I was pretty much told in my assignment to produce a visual lie. What’s stopping people from lying about other things and profiting from it like Duchamp essentially did with his ready-made urinal? What’s stopping Koons from using his connections to produce perfectly crafted pieces of art he never touched because he doesn’t know how to move the material? Nothing short of their own morals and ethics. The authenticity of anything we do in this day and age is up for questionable debate. Even what I write right now could very well be false, reflecting someone else’s opinion that I may or may not have found on the internet. And what’s to stop me from turning this in even if it results in a failing grade and the ultimatum of doing it over or failing the class? Nothing but myself.