Trying to encompass every aspect of my life, and what defines me as a person is very difficult. I identify as many different things, a student, worker, Japanese American and musician are what I believe to be the four main aspects of my life. This photograph captures one aspect of my life, pictured above is every single vinyl release I have played on over the past 5 years, 11 Ep's and 3 full length LP's. This is the music I have written and recorded in the various bands I have played in. This is the entire hard copy discography of my musical career.
What I believe makes this an artwork is that this is the first time I have ever compiled everything into one photographic shot. These records generally just sit in a shelf at home, rarely do I take them out. Putting these records together in one place has forced me to reflect on everything I have done over the past 5 years of my life.
With this photograph I am trying to show the viewer a snippet of my life, recording music and releasing it in vinyl format is very important to me and I wanted to make that clear by showing the amount of output I have had in such a short period of time. For my materials I decided it would be best to use the physical copies of the records I have.
Stuart Hall writes that stereotypes, reduces, essentializes, naturalizes and fixes the people that they are directed towards. This photograph is a direct and honest representation of a very important aspect of my life. It is not a stereotype, it does not reduce my life to a small group of traits, it is the physical proof of what I have accomplished with my music.
This is great Charles- it must feel good to see all of the physical/tangible documents of your music work. This kind of "selfie" is an excellent way to represent one aspect of your complex identity.
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