Our lives are stippled with parasocial relationships.
We engage with other peoples’ work and feel connected to those people as a consequence.
Sometimes these relationships go deeper and we make contact with these makers-of-things, and sometimes we engage with photos of them doing non-work things, videos of them being interviewed, tours of their homes, their offices, their lifestyles—content that makes us feel closer to them despite a lack of direct connection.
Each new touchpoint, whatever its shape, is like peering through a keyhole into someone else’s reality.
Almost always, of course, our perception of what’s happening on the other side of that keyhole is subtly or heavily distorted.
We see a version of their lives, their work, their priorities that are refined, curated, trimmed, filtered, and optimized for external consumption. We also apply our own biases and learnings from previous experiences to what we consume, further distorting what’s presented to us.
I’ve been thinking about this dynamic a lot, lately, as I’m in the process of reworking a (thankfully small) portion of my home for public consumption.
I’ll be shooting more video in the coming months, and alongside the technical concerns (lighting, audio, etc) I want to make what’s in the frame reflective of myself and my work without distracting from the actual content in the process.
Who am I when viewed through this particular keyhole?
How might I accurately and purposefully shape this compositional context?
It’s an interesting challenge, and one I may have figured out (at least for this upcoming project’s initial incarnation).
But this has been a useful process to work through, in general, as it has forced me to flag and assess my parasocial relationships with others while also making sure what’s being presented to those who consume my work is clear, useful, and representative without being too-polished or unrealistically altered.
Some of what’s out there is working, some isn’t. There’s work to be done, but I think I have a better sense of how to do that work, now.
Concisely, though, I believe these keyhole-scale compositions should present our narratives, offerings, and perspectives in the most useful and digestible way across whichever mediums are most relevant to the subject-matter, intended audience, and the conversations we want to have (and relationships we want to build atop those conversations).
If you found some value in this essay, consider buying me a coffee :)