Since coming to Paragauy, I have taken about two thousand photos which, regrettably, I have already started to sift through, organize and reflect on. I'm not proud of it. I feel like that all-too-common teenage girl, who spends the first three hours of a party taking pictures of herself with anyone willing and spends the last hour looking through them for a new facebook profile shot.
Yet, hypocrite that I am, I have looked through my photo collection so far and I think it gives a fairly accurate image of Asuncion.
In it are the hundreds of old buses, bought cheaply from from richer countries who have long since upgraded.
It shows (not surprisingly) the disparity between the luxurious mansions of the rich few and the broken streets, on which live many thousands of impoverished natives.
It contains the well-shaped, tanned faces of the youth as well as the inevitably sun-damaged skin of the elderly.
While these subjects (and many more) highlight the pleasant personality of this forgotten country, one also catches glimpses in my collection of a pale something that does not belong. An unsightly blemish sullies the clean pages of my album. Like a persistent rash on the skin of my portfolio, it contributes nothing to my attempt at showing the true Asuncion and serves only as an unwanted itch and distraction.
It is me.
I have tried to avoid it (or at least pretended to) but people like playing with my camera and my image is just as strange and novel to them as theirs to mine.
When I see myself among my photos, I realize that I have forgotten just how white I am. No amount of familiarity with the language or the neighborhood can change the fact that I am wholly separate from the culture here.
Thus, before compiling my definitive collection, intend to purge it of my ugly mug.
Join me next Saturday for "From Paraguay to Peru: The search for new cultures to insult and belittle"
Yet, hypocrite that I am, I have looked through my photo collection so far and I think it gives a fairly accurate image of Asuncion.
In it are the hundreds of old buses, bought cheaply from from richer countries who have long since upgraded.
It shows (not surprisingly) the disparity between the luxurious mansions of the rich few and the broken streets, on which live many thousands of impoverished natives.
It contains the well-shaped, tanned faces of the youth as well as the inevitably sun-damaged skin of the elderly.
While these subjects (and many more) highlight the pleasant personality of this forgotten country, one also catches glimpses in my collection of a pale something that does not belong. An unsightly blemish sullies the clean pages of my album. Like a persistent rash on the skin of my portfolio, it contributes nothing to my attempt at showing the true Asuncion and serves only as an unwanted itch and distraction.
It is me.
I have tried to avoid it (or at least pretended to) but people like playing with my camera and my image is just as strange and novel to them as theirs to mine.
When I see myself among my photos, I realize that I have forgotten just how white I am. No amount of familiarity with the language or the neighborhood can change the fact that I am wholly separate from the culture here.
Thus, before compiling my definitive collection, intend to purge it of my ugly mug.
Join me next Saturday for "From Paraguay to Peru: The search for new cultures to insult and belittle"
I hope this means you are amassing a collection of photos of yourself that you put in their own folder. And then someone will go through your computer some day and say, God, every picture is of himself. So conceited.
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