Are you happy?

I really liked taking portraitures because these photos involved real people with real thoughts and emotions. You are able to captures these feelings with a click of a button. I chose to focus my project around the idea “are you happy?” which is inspired by a photo taken by Duane Michals. A man is seen reading a book and on the page it says “I think about thinking.” I wanted to use a smiley face as the symbol for happiness. Happiness is shown through a smile, but no one actually knows if you are truly happy. I also wanted to keep the model anonymous, because everyone has experienced putting on a fake smile, so I used a paper plate to hide their face. After I took some photos, I actually thought they looked really funny and so did the models. When I asked some strangers to put this plate on their face for a picture, they all were very accepting. I told all the models to do their own poses. After I took the pictures, they told me that they were actually smiling for the picture even though they were wearing a mask. When someone takes a picture of someone, usually the first thing they do is smile. We are taught at a young age to smile for pictures, which really exemplifies the idea of faking happiness. Overall, I enjoyed taking these photos because these masks on individuals somehow became a humorous concept.