The Value of Face

I vividly remember the first time I saw The Afghan Girl. I was in my Western Hemisphere class in middle school, shuffling through the pages of ancient, mauled National Geographic magazines. Her eyes leaped out at me. Pain, saddness, anger, fear, it was all screaming off the page, pleading. When I opened Seeing and Writing 3 to Sharbat Gula's photo, I froze once more. My thoughts were like what Dorothy Allison said in her essay This is Our World, "If I sit with this image long enough, this story, I have the hope of understanding something I did not understand before. And that, too, is art, the best art." I just sat, waiting for her story to seep out and fill me, waiting to begin to comprehend. I feel like that's how stories are though. Everyday you go about your business, and one day the story finds you. Whether it be through photographs, friendships, nature, or art, the story finds you and fills you, it wraps you up and consumes your thoughts.

On another note, I really enjoyed Dorothy Allison's essay This is Our World. I referenced it earlier but it deserves more notice. Allison writes of how art is akin to a Rorschach test, acting as a "projective hologram of our secret lives." I know this to be true in my own life, having spent many years hiding behind the general opinions of others, fearing that my own opinions would act like a window to my innermost thoughts and dreams. Allison's essay surprised me. I did not expect to learn something about myself by reading about someone else. One sentence in particular haunts me, "I know I am not supposed to mention what I see." It has made me question how much I cover up and hide away deep inside. It has made me wonder what exactly I am hiding from.

"Art is not meant to be polite, secret, coded, or timid," Allison wrote. As artists, we can't afford to hide. Sharbat Gula, the Afghan Girl, didn't hide. She showed her face and unknowingly brought attention to the devastation Afghanistan refugees were facing. By simply being artists, we must heed Dorothy Allison's call for action.