The self and identity have been considered as very important but volatile notions from the beginning of psychology. Other researchers, as well as psychologists, have tried to refine the conceptual and empirical study tools of the complex nature of the self. For a long time, the self and the related processes (such as self respect and reflexiveness) have been in the focus for social and behavioral sciences, as well as of psychology. One would expect a clear definition to exist, taken into account the volume of study. William James (1842 - 1910) states that the self is the most troublesome mechanism psychology has to deal with, but in spite of all his writings and of a century of research, the issue is still open. There are a few aspects that we know: that the self can be the object of its own reflection, that understanding the world and other people, or literature, is filtered by the self, that after adolescence, even though the self is stable, some aspects come to the fore. Often, due to personal or interpersonal reasons, the public self is not in accordance with the one we are privately aware of. Numerous aspects are completely unknown though: we do not know where it resides in the brain, or if it exists since birth. We cannot estimate the effect of culture. Summarizing, one can say that the self is an organized and interactive system of thoughts, feelings and reasons, which characterize an individual.

Artistic identity is even more controversial than personal identity, especially since we live in a world where it is in permanent evolution and change due to the technological level. Artists often regard their artwork as a free projection of a personal feeling, but they have to shape their style in competition with others, with the permanent obsession of originality. The power of this originality is intensely eroded by a flood of ads, fashion images and others. More recently, style and personal information have become information packets, valid for short periods of time, and then rapidly used and ejected from the system. The gender separation in text, visual arts or music does not exist so blatantly any more, because everything is transmitted through the same digital code, can be altered, collaged and viewed on the same screen, printed on the same printer and accessed by permanently handy software. The Renaissance paradigm of the painting seen as the opening towards a unique, artist-defined perspective to be perceived by the art consumer, has often created an equivalence of identity with artistic vision. In time, the equation has remained stable, and the certitude of a firm point of view, be it radical or bizarre, reassures the audience that they have an important part and can accept or reject the artistic point of view. As artists develop strategies that abandon the equivalence of the personal vision with the artistic identity, the audience unity of perception is undermined too. The artist and the art consumer are not the origin and the destination any more; they become just binding points in the complex informational nexus. Purposely or not, artists are heading towards a crisis of the centralized self as identity model, and the crisis extends to the art audience too.

The situation is even more complicated in the case of Eastern European artists: they develop in the uncertainty of a world in the process of rebuilding an uncertain political and economic future. The changes of the last decade are obvious: access to information, a desire for synchronicity, for integration in the global circuit of values, are just of few of the factors that influence artistic creation. All of a sudden, the artist is exposed to new stimuli, belonging to consumerist civilization and cultural globalization. In such circumstances, shaping or preserving identity has acquired fundamental importance. In the physical world, there is an inherent unity of the self, because corporality provides a clear definition of identity; the self can be complex and mutable, but the body offers stability, as Sartre says in L’Etre et le néant. The virtual world of art is different, information disseminates instantaneously and the stability of the body represents no guarantee. When the art form in question is photography, a branch of art on identity quest among the traditional ones, the problem multiplies exponentially.

Razvan Ion is a visual witness of this system in continuous evolution, his photographs acutely expressing this new identity model, apparently very frail but sometimes shockingly tough, with ever-changing boundaries and characters in which we can all identify ourselves. They contemplate their own mirrored image or are rendered with shapeless forms, making identification impossible. That something, which confers the unique identity, the physical body or the physiognomy, the source of possible biometric coordinates, does not exist any more. Often, they can be confused with mannequins, stressing the idea of the reification of humanity. Disarticulated or cropped silhouettes, sometimes hiding behind masks that allow the expression of the real opinion in body language, populate his universe. Sometimes, a mirror reflects the image of a character, but my means of reflection, the universe closes upon itself in its sterility governed by a different set of rules. The mirror is not a symbol of openness, but only a means to confirm belonging to the material world and the nostalgia of identification with a possible model that does not exist, which can generate stability. His characters imitate the appearance of normality, but mannequins with hollow looks, reminding of the ancient beauty and harmony ideals, contradict this appearance. Monochromatic backgrounds underline the almost classical balance of the image. We are told very openly that we do not live in a world of harmony any more, and that art has to reflect this game of the contraries, of insecurities and search.

The artist’s videographs illustrate the issue of identity-in-time, given by the physical space-time continuum. Completely different from the photographs-as-object, an older problem of the medium, they emphasize the ineffable moment when this continuum breaks, when the body does not represent the criterion of a Procustean judgment of the surrounding universe. All of a sudden, that criterion does not exist any more: apparently, the images are identical, but in fact the physical continuity is subtly modified. Traditional photography is fundamentally an object. If it is changed into videography, it becomes a space-time continuum, situated in a historical present which, it is implied, does not exist.

A short video entitled The Janitor evolves in simple movements and consecrates a simple moment of existence, emphasizing textures, hallucinating background sounds and lights. Information is perfectly accessible, of a disarming simplicity, illustrating a mental process of perception and identification of data from the surrounding universe more than a socially useful activity and questioning again that unique identity that is related to physical continuity.

Razvan Ion is permanently looking for the hidden self, the identity threatened by this world of ready-made symbols. His photographs are fragments of an intensely lyrical, sad reality, raising dramatic questions about the role of the artist in a world where conventionality is the rule and truth is just a hollow dictionary definition. The permanent play between clarity and blur serves as a powerful technique to accentuate the conceptual structure of his photography. The result is an image of disturbing beauty, haunting the viewer with its unanswered questions. His new series of images represents the history of personal introspection, a narrative where the artist is the main character, looking for a new personal identity, which must be uncovered step by step, by discarding redundant detail and looking for authenticity. The multiple artistic identities, which reveal facets of daily experience, are apparently invisible but in fact codes that can help decode this complex and multilayered universe.

May 2003, New York

This article also appeared in Artphoto Magazine