The Addiction of Acceptance: A Junior Self-Portrait Diptych by Alexander Kim (2013)

My photo on the left-hand side of the cigarette represents the message of my poem I wrote for English, being that failure is a state of mind. The way it represents this theme is that I related failure to addictions. The reason for this is that both failure and addictions are difficult things to overcome, however; if you do overcome it, it’ll be worth it in the end. The burning cigarette represents the constant fight and effort to beat your addiction, despite it being a truly hard thing to fight against. Just as failure is when you are repeatedly faced with it, you begin to stop believing in yourself and in your abilities to succeed. This will ultimately lead to your downfall so this also relates to the words in the picture opposite of it. It is crucial that you believe in yourself.

The picture on the right-hand side uses both the images of the words on the poster saying ''Believe In Yourself'' and the skateboard in the background to depict the theme of my poem and message that you must persist when you are overwhelmed with failure. Once you have given up on yourself, you have truly failed. If you don’t successfully perform something it doesn’t mean you have failed, just as long as you are strong enough to get up and try again. This literally corresponds with the second image of the skateboard on the right-hand side of the picture, because if you don’t do a trick right you will fall. And it is up to you to get up and try again instead of giving up on yourself and your capabilities.

The reason these two images are placed next to each other is because they share a similar message despite the images being very different on the surface. They tell the message that failure is a state of mind that ultimately you control, however; they convey this message in different ways using different aspects of failure. The two images also have visual correspondences, like the use of vertical lines like the poles in the right-hand picture, and the cigarette and pole in the background in the left hand picture.