Ben Ponté

Viral Images

I use self-portraiture as a way of asking questions to do with privacy and identity. Where is the boundary between the personal and the public, between interior and exterior space, between self and world?

I approach the self-portrait as a performative act that allows me to ask and re-ask these questions over time. The repetitive questioning re-visions what endures and allows what is superficial to fall away. But in the image itself there is no hierarchy.

Oscar Wilde said, ‘never underestimate the surface of things’.

See also Dis-Embody Language collection.