Seeing is Believing - Part 3

I have been thinking more about the exhibitions I visited the other day, at the Photographer's Gallery. The introduction to Antoine d'Agata's show included a quotation from the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa:

what we see is not made up of what we are seeing but rather from what we are

which is quite possibly true, but a strange thought nonetheless. Looking at pictures like these, the idea that we are looking at ourselves, or rather images that we can only interpret through our own experience, is disturbing. It's also relevant to Fred Ressler's interpretation of his shadow pictures, in the Seeing is Believing exhibition. After commenting on this work in my first post on this subject, it was a pleasant surprise to get a response from the photographer himself.



I know very little about Pessoa - I first encountered his work in a dreamlike album by Bévinda of songs based on his poems. According to sources quoted in Wikipedia, he wrote under a large number of heteronyms (72!) , each possessing

distinct temperaments, philosophies, appearances and writing styles

This statue sits outside one of the cafés he frequented (although not one I visited when I was in Lisbon, otherwise I would have a better picture to show you).