April Archive Highlight - “Eventually Something Will Look Familiar”

In a conversation I had lately (read: today, 4 hours ago - these get edited to the very last minute, you know?), I found myself asking a question so interesting to me it only took me 3 attempts to find words for it: “how recently was the last moment you can remember when how it felt being you wouldn’t be recognizable to you today?” While many of you are correctly thinking “perhaps you should have taken another 3 attempts there, bud,” hopefully a few of you have managed to take a machete out and parse that well enough to start wondering: in what ways do we change? In what ways do we stay the same? When (if ever) do we notice?   

Last year, I shared the questions I’ve asked every May since 2014 as part of a time capsule gathering data first and allowing meaning to emerge when/if it does; When I started, I went with the working title: “From This Day Fourth,” and resolved that each year, I would do at least the following within 7 days of May 4th:

• Ask someone to take or make a portrait of me

•  Note down whatever biomedical or financial data is available (bank statement, annual check up,
   etc.)

• Ask someone to interview me in a set format

Last year marked a decade of the project, and my interviewer pushed me to consider whether the questions I asked myself were still working, and challenged me to think of new ones.

Here’s the questions I’ve been asking myself for the past 10 years:

Short Answer Section:

Where are you?

What do you do there?

How long have you been there?

When will you leave?

What's the best thing to eat there?

Long Answer Section:

How are you?

How do you keep yourself busy?

What are your plans?

What do you want?

What do you need?

Are you happy?

Are you taking care of yourself?

See you next year?

Naturally, I set straight to work right away (read: delayed until almost a year later) and have now spent the past week thinking carefully about how I want to introspect for the next decade. In the meantime, I thought it might be an interesting time to look at another aspect of the project - the portraits.

Each year I introduce a friend/collaborator to the project, and encourage them to envision the portrait however they choose; I’m interested in their response to the idea of capturing something about where/how I am.

In the meantime, I thought it might be interesting to see a few examples - starting with 2014:

Photos by Jack Dickson - a fellow alumni of NYU Abu Dhabi

If you’ve been on my website, you’ll recognize this shoot (and will thus know my horrible secret that the lead image for my website is a decade old).

Most of the shoots have been straightforward portraits, albeit with some small alterations - in each case, the documentor is simply asked to capture some element of how I am right now, and how they see me

Example: 2023 photo taken by Maya Jackson, presented without further comment

However, as the years have gone on—and as I transition out of living out of suitcase and into meaningfully living somewhere, I’ve taken more interest is documenting some element of my surroundings, and what I do there.

Self-Portrait, with photo assistance from then roommate Micah Greenleaf. May 2020

In some years that’s gone so far as to barely contain me in the photos at all - documentors instead have chosen to show me myself by way of the things they associate with me, either out on the town or through some consensual snooping through my apartment.

Washington Square Park. May 4th, 2015, as pictured by Brock Johnson, Director of Photography for  “Better to Live”—my first job out of University.

A triptych of things seen in my apartment by Lilly Roman. May, 2022

It’s interesting to me to watch the number of approaches and mediums grow; from photography to crafts to paintings, and this year a scheduled video / projection piece. This piece is the peak of a resolution I made back in 2014 to “start projects without needing to know how they end.” Which of course, could double for a statement on life, if you were being really indulgent and self-absorbed.

But perhaps a guy who’s spent a decade doing collaborative gazing at his own navel can’t afford such statements.

Time will tell!

~

Yannick Trapman-O’Brien. April 30th, 2024