Like many people, I have a fascination with childhood photos of "myself". The glut of more recent images and selfies taken on a smart phone don't really mean anything to me. But those rare pictures of a young boy in a pre-digital world I find powerfully seductive.
It's more a case of trying to understand how these objects frozen in time continue to play an important philosophical role - not by revealing or constructing my present self, but, paradoxically, in serving to disguise it and thus helping distance me from myself.
Ultimately, we can never really see ourselves; not in photographs, nor in mirrors. And when I look at that nine-year old above wearing his favourite Fred Perry t-shirt, I glimpse a kind of stranger - albeit a stranger with whom I have a lot in common and who constantly haunts my writings.
Ultimately, we can never really see ourselves; not in photographs, nor in mirrors. And when I look at that nine-year old above wearing his favourite Fred Perry t-shirt, I glimpse a kind of stranger - albeit a stranger with whom I have a lot in common and who constantly haunts my writings.
As Roland Barthes says, no one is responsible for their childhood, but if it marks you and stays with you, it's never completely done away with.
