Constrained: A Junior Self-Portrait Diptych by Sasha Sobol (2013)

My diptych has nothing to do with my Personal Poem. Instead, I built it off of the phrase ''Labels are like costumes because they’re appealing but not always comfortable.'' The left photograph represents the appealing aspect of labels and the right represents the uncomfortable aspect. Both are related to costumes and presentation. The two photographs are visually united by circles made by the tie, the necklace, and the contact. The black and white on the right also goes with the grey background on the left.

On the left side, I photographed a tie and a necklace (with a pendant). These two entities are round to represent rigid, confining gender boxes imposed on us by society. Furthermore, both are things people wear around their necks, which further hints at confinement. I placed a pendant in the cage created by the necklace to emphasize how women are not given as many opportunities as men. The tie is larger than the necklace to represent male privilege. The tie is blue because blue is the default ''boy color.'' The necklace is brightly colored because society expects women to look attractive and slightly childish. I picked fairly shiny objects to photograph so that their aesthetic qualities translate into the appeal of labels.

On the right side, I photographed a contact lens to show how gender roles, as well as other kinds of labels, make me uncomfortable. Contacts are appealing because they make people with poor eyesight look and feel like they have 20/20 vision. In a way, they normalize people. However, they are also uncomfortable because your eyes become dry and irritated when you wear them for too long and you have to put them on and take them off every day. In the same way, labels are there to shove people in rigidly defined boxes and to normalize them, which I don’t appreciate. I made this side black and white to convey a sense of dullness and unfavorableness when contrasted with the brightly colored photograph on the left.